Case Study: Artfinder transcript

Digital R&D fund: Digital day Manchester

Case Study: Artfinder
Alexandra Jorge, Production Manager Artfinder:
Hi, my name is Alexandra and I am a production manager at Artfinder which is a
UK-ased company - do not let the accent fool you! Artfinder was actually started
y a group of people from "ery different ac#grounds ut with two things in
common! $ne % we&re all extremely passionate aout art! 'wo % we&"e identified
that art is not actually that well ser"ed y the we! 'here&s really no single focus
point online that you can experience art in! If you thin# aout other sectors li#e
music, fashion, mo"ies % all of them ha"e an online destination! (hat we&re trying
to do at Artfinder is create this home for art online where you can find and disco"er
more art, where you can get more information and actually retain that information,
and where you can start creating your own art profile and share it with your friends
and other people!
In order to do this, we really ha"e four asic components that we uilt! 'he first
one goes into content and cataloguing! (e ha"e started creating a dataase that
has o"er )*,+++ artists, o"er half a million wor#s of art and we&re still growing and
wor#ing with our partners to accumulate enough information that is oth rele"ant
and accessile - this is aout "isual wor#s of art and artists, ut also where you
can experience this art li"e! (e really wor# with our partners to try to dri"e that
traffic ac# to them as well!
'he other thing we really want to do is uild a community! In order to enale that
we gi"e people tools to collect art, share it, and really start ma#ing art a part of
your own identity! Also enaling you to recommend the #ind of things that you li#e
to your friends and learn from them what #ind of things they li#e! (e&"e also
identified that art is a particularly hard thing to search for, ecause the traditional
#eyword search doesn&t really wor# with art - it&s a "isual thing! ,ecommendations
help with that- ut we&re also wor#ing with technology to try to identify how you can
use image-ased search to loo# for things you li#e and also to e ale to find new
things! 'hat includes image-recognition and other disco"ery tools we ha"e online!
(e&re uilding these tools to help you find the #ind of art that you li#e and once
you ha"e that information to try to help you to experience this li"e! It&s aout
loo#ing at the stuff on the we ut really trying it to lin# ac# to our partners and
)
Case Study: Artfinder transcript
helping people understand where they can actually find the #ind of art that they&re
loo#ing for!
'he last part is aout how you consume art! 'here&s the traditional ways of course,
ut we&re also exploring new ways of tying it ac# to our partners! All these things
are online, ut we&re also exploring new technologies and one of the things we&re
really excited aout is talets! 'he reason for it is that they&re .uintessentially a
"isual tool, and they&re accessile worldwide % or I should say the content is
accessile worldwide % and they&re moile, they&re easy to carry around! (e really
thin# that there&s potential for talets to open up an entire new world of how people
consume art, how the information comes to you and actually how you can enhance
your li"e experience!
In order to really explore this potential to its maximum we decided to de"elop an
Apps production system that we call /ountain! It&s a we-ased system - online ut
secured y a password, you get a username and e"erything! It ta#es you through
a step-y-step .uic#, easy and cost-effecti"e way of de"eloping apps! It&s text-
ased for the content you want to inform aout your collection and then it also
creates a gallery space where you asically upload images and upload
spreadsheets with the #ind of data our partners already ha"e!
'his is a template system, ut we also understand that partners ha"e a rand and
a "isual image that&s uni.ue to them! In order to facilitate them to e ale to
expose that we&"e created a homepage, if you li#e, or a co"er page for our apps
which is image-ased! 'his is recogni0ing that people need to e ale to identify
themsel"es through the apps they&re creating with our system! (hat you get is an
app that has images at its heart! All of the information within it, including text
documents, which are generally already de"eloped for exhiitions, collections etc!,
"isitor information that includes maps, lin#s ac# to our partners % again the whole
idea that we&re wor#ing together and want to enhance the experience of li"e art %
and also images that ha"e asic metadata! Also, we ha"e enaled all these
aspects of sharing and community through /aceoo# and emailing! ,eally the
point here is that our talet apps are an integrated part of this entire system that
includes wesites and our relationships with our partners! (hat we&re really trying
to do is uild a community that can ha"e art at its heart!
I&m going to hand you to the ale hands of 1riscilla and she&ll tal# to you aout how
grants ha"e helped and enaled our wor#!
*
Case Study: Artfinder transcript
Priscilla Li, Founder, Business Development & ontent Artfinder:
'han#s Alex! I thin# a lot of us here are trying to na"igate the grants process and
understand how a pro2ect li#e this can go through it! In this section I&m going to try
to gi"e some information on it!
(e applied for a grant aout 3-4 months ago and this is what we&"e produced,
what Alex 2ust went through "ery .uic#ly! 'here is a wesite with aout half a
million pieces of art and *,5++ galleries online as well as )*,+++ artists! (e did
some customi0ed data cleaning tools that helped us with content % and I&m pretty
passionate aout content ecause I head up content at Artfinder- as well as a
recommendations engine we produced as part of that wesite, image recognition
technology and the i1ad and smartphone apps! So there were a lot of deli"erales!
At first I was a it worried aout the pro2ect&s scope ut that&s what we did and
applied for for a particular grant!
(hy did we do this6 'his is our #ey o2ecti"e: we wanted to estalish some
synergies with our collaorati"e partners where we can increase pulic access-
similar to 78S'A&s o2ecti"e of audience engagement- as well as widening the
pulic access for the entire sector! 9ou can see we want to increase pulic access,
dri"e a lot of traffic and footfall ac# to our partners, the museums and galleries!
(e also wanted to allow access to images that no one else gets to see, or
artwor#s that are in the digital stac#s! 'hat&s one of the o2ecti"es! As well as
exploring new ways that we can estalish usiness models! (e tal#ed a little it
aout print on demand, the apps, and new channels asically across platforms! So
when we tal#ed aout digital technologies we&re tal#ing the we as well as
applications - again, going ac# to those out of print catalogues!
(ho did we collaorate with6 (e had a partner called 1aul Holerton 1ulishing!
He runs a pulishing company that helps produce these catalogues in oo# form!
He #new aout the pulishing ac#ground that we need % he had the art history
ac#ground! He #new content! 'hat is definitely #ey, ecause we wanted to
represent the wor#s and the content the est way possile for the museums,
galleries or picture liraries! InterAnalytics was a technology company we had that
helped with our recognition images % that&s all the algorithms ehind what ma#es
our magical tour magical and allow us to gi"e you a customi0ed tour of what you
would li#e or what your friends would li#e!
:
Case Study: Artfinder transcript
'hen last ut not least are the many museums and galleries we partnered with!
Again, "ery, "ery tight timelines, ut we went out there and tal#ed to a lot of these
galleries and got their content on oard! (e&re still in discussion with many more,
as you can see here!
Challenges % I definitely thin# the de"ils are in the details ut it&s important not to
get ogged down y them! /or us, content and managing the standards and
guidelines was tric#y ecause e"ery museum or arts and cultural organisation has
different ways of dealing with their content and it&s "ery important that we est
represent that, again without ma#ing things inefficient! (e dri"e efficiency ut #eep
in mind that we need to respect how that content needs to appear! ;eing flexile is
important!
<eli"ering on the wide scope that I listed meant ma#ing sure we had dedicated
technical resources! (e made it "ery clear who is on the pro2ect, who is on the
team, what their roles and responsiilities are, who&s the dedicated management
resource to help coordinate all of that! (e had something called sprints which told
us exactly what we&re deli"ering e"ery two wee#s % they #ept us on trac# and on
time % and we did user testing and feedac#! If things don&t wor# then we ha"e to
adapt pretty .uic#ly! 'hat&s part of that audience engagement aspect!
/inally, managing the costs re.uired to digiti0e content! Something that we
definitely don&t want to ta#e for granted is ma#ing sure we ma#e the right
technological choices so we&re not too fixed on what we thin# we want to do!
Sometimes we ha"e to see what the prolem is so we can ad2ust! 'hat was fairly
important! 'he learning and impact % again I tal#ed aout content, structuring it,
ma#ing sure we ha"e guidelines that are flexile! 'he partnerships ha"e to e
strong % we were luc#y enough to partner with people we #new fairly well % we
#new how they wor#ed, we met fairly fre.uently and I was one of the pro2ect
managers for this grant process so I can say communication was pi"otal ecause
we had so many sta#eholders and we had to ma#e sure we adhered to their needs
as well as what they were getting out of the pro2ect, what their exploitation enefits
were!
I&"e tried to go through that "ery .uic#ly % please approach us if you are loo#ing for
partnering and you&d li#e some of the technologies we offer, as well as ha"ing
some i1ad apps we can da00le you with here! I hope that was helpful!
=