Demo: The Post-Internet Museum

In 2006 a new facet of art history was identified called “post-internet”, signifying art that has been made within the native context of the internet. That is, the internet is no longer regarded as a separate entity to daily life, it represents ideas and art that is made in a society fully saturated by connectivity and mass media the internet provides. Art made in this context interfaces with social media, web cams, video games, memes, corporate branding, and appropriation. The assumption was, we are all online first and going out into the world is secondary to our online lives.

In parallel to this movement, we were switching from primarily desktop computers to mobile devices. Keyboards and mouse interactions were being replaced with touches and swipes. Over the last ten to fifteen years a robust vocabulary of best practices has emerged for these interactions. For instance, most people know that “swipe left” is shorthand for passing on a match in a dating app.

This has always nagged at me in my work, when would the museum become “post-internet?” When would a museum acknowledge that its visitors’ expectations for the organization had surpassed the traditional model of being granted access to physical space? Museum websites still look inspired by print even though more than half of its visitors are coming through mobile devices. Working in museums I would see visitors walk up to screens in the lobby and try to swipe and touch them as if they were a mobile device and not a non-interactive LCD screen.

To understand what a post-internet museum might be like we can look at UX for popular apps. TikTok is maybe the most used app on the internet right now, over the past decade it has sculpted its UX into a ruthlessly efficient content delivery platform. I’ve long wondered what it would be like to leverage this UX for more wholesome explorations. Before you read further, please visit the demo: ArtSnap, a museum collection explorer modeled after TikTok. After playing with this a little, in my opinion, this should be the default mobile experience for browsing museum collections.

The TikTok user interface behaves like this:

Swipe up/down (vertical) — This is the core interaction. Swiping up on the main feed advances to the next video, and swiping down goes back to the previous one. It’s the primary way you browse content on the For You page.

Swipe left — On a video, swiping left takes you to that creator’s profile page. In some contexts it can also reveal additional info or a linked page.

Swipe right — From the main feed, swiping right takes you to your Friends feed or, depending on the version, to the Discover/Search page.

Tap (single) — Tapping the screen pauses or resumes the current video.

Double-tap — Double-tapping the right side of the screen “likes” the video (a heart animation appears). You can also double-tap the left side, though this typically just pauses/plays.

Long press — Holding down on a video brings up a context menu with options like “Not Interested,” “Save Video,” “Report,” or sharing options.

Pinch to zoom — On some videos, you can pinch outward to zoom into the content.

Drag (on progress bar) — You can scrub through a video by dragging along the thin progress bar at the bottom of the screen.

Pull down (from top of feed) — Pulling down refreshes the feed with new content.

The whole design philosophy prioritizes one-handed, thumb-driven navigation, almost everything important is reachable with vertical swipes and taps on the right-side icon column (like, comment, share, bookmark).

With that in mind, I adapted the TikTok user experience to an art discovery app. This app would behave like TikTok, not just in UX but also develop a taste profile for the user based on their behaviors.

Swipe up/down (vertical) — Swiping up on the main feed advances to the next artwork, and swiping down goes back to the previous one.

Swipe left — Swiping left on an artwork will take you to a new feed of just that artist’s work.

Swipe right — Swiping right will “like” the artwork and add it to your saved list.

Double-tap — Double-tapping will “like” the artwork.

Long press — Holding down on a video brings up a context menu with options like “Not Interested,” “Save,” “Share,” “View on museum site,” toggle the “Highlights only” feature, and also the option to reset your taste profile.

The taste profile tracks three dimensions of artworks:

These dimensions are then weighted based on user interaction with the artwork:

Daily decay — once per calendar day, all weights are multiplied by 0.95. Anything below 0.1 gets pruned. Recent taste dominates.

Picking art — the exploitation ratio is min(signals / 50, 0.7). The signals counter is how many interactions you’ve had total (every dwell, save, skip, etc.) increments it by 1. When you’re brand new (signals = 0), the ratio is 0 / 50 = 0 — every card is random exploration. The app has no idea what you like yet, so it doesn’t try to guess. As you interact, the ratio climbs. At 10 signals it’s 10/50 = 0.2 — 20% of cards try to match your taste, 80% are still random. At 25 signals, it’s 50/50. At 35 signals, 70/30.

Once you hit 35+ signals, min(signals/50, 0.7) clamps at 0.7. No matter how much you use the app, 30% of cards are always random — stuff you’ve never shown interest in. That’s the exploration floor. Without it, the feed would eventually only show you variations of things you’ve already liked. The more you use it, the more the feed tailors to you, but it never fully stops showing you new things.

While the demo I made is confined to collection exploration, a savvy museum could apply this to many facets of its operations. A post-internet museum might incorporate dimensions from events, exhibitions, guides, curators, and artists into its taste profile. It could then integrate the taste profile with the CRM to better understand how to provoke engagement in a salient and timely manner from its constituents.