Embedding evaluation into interactive projects

An interactive digital project is a treasure-trove of information. Simple interactions like clicks, votes, and social media comments can create powerful feedback loops between you and your audience. But how can you make best use of this data? We spoke to three creatives to learn about how to design digital interactions with evaluation in mind.  

Online: In Event of Moon Disaster (Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta) 

A short film about how technologies can bend our histories and realities, In Event of Moon Disaster is presented as a physical installation and an interactive, online experience. The project had a direct goal: to raise awareness of deepfake technologies. When it came to creating the online version, the team realised that website analytics could give them some straightforward data to help evaluate their goal.  

“Our first question was: how can we best get this information across, and then evaluate whether or not we have?” says Halsey. Here’s how they did it:  

Structure the audience journey

The online experience leads you along a clear path, beginning with a simple question: “Can you spot a deepfake?” After that comes the film, and after that is a concise, four-question quiz. Taken together, these questions result in data critical to evaluating the impact of the project. From then on, the audience can choose their own adventure through the site’s wealth of research information.  

This structure accounts for different levels of knowledge and treats the audience with respect and humour – vital to making a quiz feel fun. “We don’t give them a score,” Halsey says, “because it’s not about what you score, it’s about what you learn.” Each question is explained, regardless of the audience’s answer: “Get it right or wrong, you’re equally likely to come away with more understanding.” 

Match your goals to your data 

The team wanted to know if their audiences were watching the film in full and if they were completing the quiz. Early on, they decided not to track individual audience members’ responses. There was no need to know if visitor A received a higher quiz score than visitor B, as data on overall completion rates gave them enough information. This meant that their site’s basic, built-in analytics could provide them with all the information they needed.   

“Simply doing the quiz was a success for us,” Halsey says. “If they are engaged enough to want to do it, and they continue to the end, that is a measure of success. And we can easily look at that, because we can see how much drop-off happened from the first question to the last – and there was very little. That made us feel like there was some enjoyment, combined with an increase in curiosity and knowledge of the societal challenge that we were raising awareness about.” 

In short, keep it simple! Decide what you need to know from your audiences and focus on that. 

In-person: The Acquisitions Panel (Fast Familiar) 

Can you give a group of strangers a difficult decision to make, without polarizing them? In The Acquisitions Panel, the audience becomes an ‘advisory panel’ for a museum and must make a choice. Should the museum accept a certain historical object? If so, how should it be labelled? Writer and director Rachel Briscoe shares tips on embedding, and reflecting on, audience data within the narrative of a performance.  

Give the data back to the audience 

The Acquisitions Panel avoids asking binary questions. Each audience member is shown multimedia information on a tablet, and instead of responding with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’, they use sliders to indicate how they feel about a topic, or to rate the importance of a certain piece of information. Then the audience is shown how everyone else voted – but anonymously.  

“If we want people to actually discuss, we need to show them that there’s a range of perspectives in the room,” Rachel says. Revealing the data in an anonymous way can help the audience to evaluate their own dynamic as a group, without breaking any trust in the voting mechanism. It also helps Fast Familiar to ensure that the show is encouraging open discussion. “We’re always looking for a spread of opinions,” Rachel says. “We can tell if anything’s gone wrong because there’s nothing to talk about!”  

Test, test, test  

Building an interactive, digital experience can be expensive, so test your work early. “We always ask ourselves, when is the earliest stage that we could run a test?” Rachel says. She suggests trying out your interactive element in as low-tech a way as possible before you commit to any code. Google Forms and other non/low-coding tools like Twine can be simple ways to test-run an idea with a first audience. 

Social media: Haydn Corrodus (Social Media and Digital Strategist) 

Social media can give you a direct line to your audience, but how can you stand out amidst the noise and ensure that your interactive campaign is speaking in the right way, to the right people? Digital strategist Haydn Corrodus walks us through the essentials when it comes to planning creative, audience-first interactions on social media, either for a specific project or for an entire organisation.  

Ask your audience what they want 

“You’ve got to be thinking, what does my audience want?” Haydn says. And if you don’t know, he suggests a simple solution: Ask. “Don’t be afraid! Say, what do you want to see here? Give them three options. At first you might get nothing, but just keep going. You’ve got to keep the fact that it’s a social platform at the front of your mind.” 

Interaction comes in many forms 

“For me, interaction comes back to thinking: what layers of the story are you trying to tell?” Haydn says, giving the Sacramento History Museum as an example. The Museum’s short-form content on TikTok gives insight into a topic, while they may delve into more detail on that same topic via the Community tab on YouTube. By sharing different content and layers of your story on different channels, you can tailor your storytelling to suit different audiences and add a reason for them to follow you on multiple channels. 

For instance, you could facilitate a vote through Instagram Story polls, or pick out a comment on TikTok and make a short video in response. Haydn recommends that you choose your platforms carefully (there’s no need to be on all of them!) and to make sure that each layer “adds value that people can’t get elsewhere, in a way that makes them want to find out more”.  

Plan ahead 

Building a community takes time. Haydn advises that you define a clear goal – perhaps you want to bring awareness to a certain topic or engage with a specific demographic. You should also have a clear, realistic measure of success that is relevant to the platform(s) you’re using. Once you have your strategy locked down, then plan your posts for the next quarter. “I would batch create,” he says, “So you’ve got content that you can put out when you need to. It gives you space to think.” Make sure your plan includes time to actually respond to your audience, too. After all, how do you build a community unless you’re in it?