Art Detective

Art Detective is an initiative from Art UK that involves specialists and the public in solving mysteries about the paintings of the public collections in the UK. Keepthinking was chosen to design and develop this crowdsourcing resource that connects public art collections lacking information about their oil paintings with providers of specialist knowledge, powered by the Qi CMS for content management.

Art UK commissioned Keepthinking to design and build a free-to-use online network that encourages public involvement – and contributions – from academics, the art trade, larger museums and informed members of the public so they can help to make new discoveries about publicly owned art in the UK.

A mobile-optimised website that works in conjunction with the Art UK database and site. To start a discussion, any user can go to the Art UK page for an artwork and click on the 'Send information to Art Detective' link to submit new information or a question. In the same way, all collections registered in Art UK can start and join public discussions, where they can discuss pieces in their collection with experts in the topic area.

Art Detective is a personal experience: the website keeps track of comments posted by each user and helps build their own profile, which provides tools to store and retrieve discussions that they find interesting. Discussions are divided into interest groups and show the level of activity, with more active discussions at the top. Groups are described, potentially sponsored and linked to other specialist networks. A theme or group may include one or more discussions, together with a panel of specific experts - like a community.

Usability and accessibility principles guided our design process, which was realised in close collaboration with the Art UK team to ensure the success of the project. The process was divided into short, iterative steps, from the creation of information architecture to wireframing and art direction, ensuring users are guided and allowed to explore in equal measure.

Anyone can intervene and offer clues and proofs. Evidence of claims needs to be provided, with a different range of contributors checking the validity of statements: collections, art historians, etc.