Why your museum website needs a “John the Swamper”
Design digital experiences that welcome first-time visitors — helpful, jargon-free and human — not just expert-focused content.
In 1996, Judy Rand wrote a thoughtful essay — “The 227-Mile Museum, or, Why We Need a Visitors’ Bill of Rights” — telling a story about a Grand Canyon rafting trip that changed how she thought about museums forever.
Judy struggled for days because the trip leader, Fred, only cared about geology, and nobody explained the basics. Then on day 5, everything changed: she met John the Swamper — a crew member whose job was to cook and push rafts off rocks. He was not an expert geologist, but he cared about the first-timers. He gave tips before a difficult climb and told stories she actually cared about.
Rand writes: “John the Swamper knew about the Anasazi… He knew all about the wildlife, too, and was ready to tell us any story we wanted to hear. I knew someone in the Grand Canyon Museum cared who accepted me as a human being first and not as an expert hiker.”
This is what museum websites need
- Welcomes first-time visitors for their curiosity and questions
- Explains without jargon
- Meets them where they are and builds their confidence
- Cares about their experience in the context of their journey
- Makes it memorable, in their own natural language
Your collections are Fred — brilliant, expert. Your digital infrastructure should be John — welcoming, helpful, human. At MuCoDi we think about this every day: when we design search, we ask “will a first-time user find it useful?”