Cultivating a Culture of Using Data at the United States Botanic Garden

Audience Impact Strategy
Written by Katie Chandler

Client: United States Botanic Garden | Location: Washington, DC

 
 

The United States Botanic Garden (USBG) had a wealth of data about its onsite audiences from a four-season study conducted by Kera Collective a couple years prior. Now, staff were looking for ways to continue using this data by weaving it into their everyday work and decision-making.

THE PROJECT

We developed a Using Data Toolkit for USBG that transformed rich data from a four-season audience research study of its Conservatory and outdoor gardens into three easy-to-use tools they could use in their daily routines to make data-informed decisions.

THE APPROACH

Through a series of working sessions with staff from USBG’s education, visitor services, and exhibits departments, we created and honed tools that would be both easy for staff to use and relevant to their work. We developed:

  • Data Snapshots + Report Connector: Data Snapshots are a series of 1-2 page infographics focused on three distinct spaces (the Conservatory, Gated Outdoor Gardens, and Bartholdi Fountain and Gardens) that pull together key data points across studies for quick reference. The Report Connector helps staff interested in a deeper dive into the wealth of data available from past evaluations through Guiding Questions and report hyperlinks that take staff right to the relevant data.

  • Audience Composites: Audience composites are a tool for portraying your audience segments according to shared characteristics. They can guide how staff make decisions, shape messaging, and connect with audiences.

  • Welcome Tool: Building on the Audience Composites, the Welcome Tool helps frontline staff engage with visitors, keeping in mind the many types of visitors that come to USBG and their varied goals for their visit.

WHAT WE LEARNED

Working closely with staff across USBG departments in a series of working sessions, we developed a deeper understanding of the types of questions staff had about visitors and the moments in their work processes where data would help strengthen their decision-making. This helped us shape the tools we created into something that would be both useful and usable for staff. 

Katie Chandler

Katie brings a decade of experience in market research and evaluation to her position as Senior Researcher at Kera Collective.

Katie’s love of anthropology, history, and applied research gives her a unique balance of curiosity about human thought and behavior and practicality to translate insights into meaningful actions. 

Katie enjoys using mixed methods to tease out the complexity and nuance in audiences’ experiences with museums and other informal learning organizations. She particularly enjoys working on projects that explore people’s relationship with the past and with the natural world.

She has published articles in several leading museum publications and frequently attends and presents at professional conferences like the American Association for State and Local History’s annual conference.  She currently serves as a reviewer for the Journal of Museum Education.

Outside the (home) office, Katie enjoys running and exploring Richmond’s many parks with her family and her dog.

Katie’s favorite museum at the moment is the Science Museum of Virginia.

Next

Bringing Hidden Stories into Focus with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center