The Challenge

As a museum with a very specific subject matter, the National Army Museum (NAM) took on the challenge of overhauling its permanent galleries to ensure that every visitor - even those with no background knowledge - can access and engage with its collections that tell the story of the British Army. NAM exists to share the stories of ordinary people with extraordinary responsibilities.

The Approach

We proposed a phased qualitative approach where learnings could build and inform future stages. We started by consulting the curators developing each gallery to explore their plans and understand exactly where they needed guidance, before developing research tools in collaboration with the NAM team.

Through a week-long online community, we successfully engaged a broad cross-section of NAM’s market using its own segmentation system, from keen regular visitors through to potential audiences who knew little more than the name. The online methodology enabled us to ‘dive deep’ into the topics, objects and stories to inform the redeveloped galleries and was a convenient way for people to feedback from the comfort of their own home, without being intimidated by more knowledgeable peers.

The Results

We captured rich, detailed feedback enabling us to develop clear recommendations to inform each stage of the redevelopment.

The redisplay has been successful, with significant increases in satisfaction (+20 percentage points “excellent”) and propensity to recommend (+13 percentage points “definitely). 

Testimonial

"We recently worked with DJS Research to inform the redesign of three permanent galleries at the National Army Museum. Rebecca went above and beyond to ensure our stakeholders were involved in the process... the team are incredibly happy with the detailed findings from the project and the actionable report, which will help them plan the next phase of the project".

Visitor Research Manager, National Army Museum