User Research

The Audience Agency, working in collaboration with Culture 24, was commissioned by Towards a National Collection (TaNC) to deliver user research to understand what users want and need from a future national collection digital infrastructure. Central to this was the clear driver within TaNC to involve and benefit an increasingly diverse and inclusive range of audiences.

The objectives were:

• To understand what a diverse range of users want and need from a future national collection digital infrastructure.
• To enable TaNC to involve and benefit an increasingly diverse and inclusive range of audiences.
• To inform the development of services, experiences, content and products built on top of a future national collection digital infrastructure.

This research took a staged consultation approach:

• Strategic context – Talking to key stakeholders and decision makers to build an understanding of the strategic context for this project.
• Framing sessions – Initial consultation with each of the user groups to develop our approach with them and produce research tools that were relevant, appropriate and pitched correctly.
• Needs gathering – Gathering feedback from the user groups using the refined research tools.
• Survey – Delivering a public survey to gather further quantitative insights.
• Sense making – Sharing initial findings with professional user groups to sense-check and develop these findings.

This research aimed to offer an initial view of how a future National Collection’s digital infrastructure could and should be shaped to create maximum value across the UK and beyond in a way that is both feasible and sustainable. It points the way towards further research and key decisions that will need to be made about the future shape of the National Collection programme.