Managing digital unpredictability and changing behaviour with reusable web-portable assets

This paper considers the impact of ubiquitous digital connectivity and the proliferation of rapidly emerging new digital devices and how these change audiences’ lives and ultimately their behaviour and expectations. It discusses how this new unpredictability makes the design and development of front-facing content and features more difficult to do and how it has increased the risk that established services may suddenly become irrelevant or obsolete for target audiences. A simple management model is discussed to cope with digital unpredictability, based on separating core business knowledge-asset management from front-facing service development, in particular the importance of translating institutional data resources into web-portable digital assets. This model is based upon releasing multiple incremental features and services, rather than long-term continuous investment in services deeply coupled to back-end systems. This model underpins the data-driven strategies employed for delivering front-end digital services by the Digital Media Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Examples of live services created using this approach are described to illustrate how the strategic model is translated in practice to create public services. The complexity of diverse legacy technology within large organisations is acknowledged and options are discussed for dealing with this. The practical implementation of specific services is described briefly to show how individual internal records can be harnessed in several diverse services, each of which is responding to a distinctly different audience need. The approach described is offered as a practical and efficient way for digital service managers to cope with unpredictable new audience expectations due to uptake of new digital consumer technology.