Meet the team behind the Bloomberg Connects app

Bloomberg employees have been applying their skills to support leading cultural institutions in a multi-year collaboration with Bloomberg Philanthropies. In doing so, they brought to market a first-of-its-kind offering to the arts and culture sector: the Bloomberg Connects app.

The Bloomberg Connects app is designed to expand access to the arts. Available on Google Play and the App Store, the free app serves as both a digital accompaniment to enhance the in-person experience (with audio guides, wayfinding maps, and article search), and as a “passport to culture” with exclusive digital content that users can enjoy anytime, anywhere.

Hear expert commentary straight from the curators at New Contemporaries in London, view galleries thematically at The Frick in New York, and explore outdoor public art and acres of gardens, all in a single app.

The app now features 60 institutions, with plans to add many more this year. We spoke with the team behind the app’s development to learn what’s driving the app’s momentum, and how the project is enabling access to the arts through the type of company-wide collaboration only possible at a place like Bloomberg.

Translating creativity through technology

“We’ve had the opportunity to help cultural organizations translate their creativity into new entryways for experiencing the arts,” says Kate Levin, who oversees the Bloomberg Philanthropies Arts program.

Bloomberg Connects’ cultural partners join the app at no cost and pay nothing for the tech development behind it. The app is maintained and updated by Bloomberg’s team of experts, so that cultural organizations can focus on developing unique content. And with so many different institutions together in a single portfolio, the exceptional range of content may mean users stay inclined to retain and revisit the app.

Making it accessible

The team also put special consideration into making an intuitive CMS back-end experience so that institutions can easily manage and update their digital collections with little technological background required.

“We set out with this to remove the obstacle of technology,” says David Strauss, project lead on Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Art team. “It’s incredibly simple to use the app, as a user to download it, but it’s also easy for the institutions to use.”

“We did a lot of interviews and met with a lot of institutions, and looked at the software they were using currently to manage their collections,” says David J. Harding, the engineering lead on the project. “It’s really having that direct exposure and getting their perspective that has been the key to pulling this together.”

Applying the agility of Bloomberg engineering and user-centric design to the product development also brings new features live faster and allows Bloomberg to provide personalized technical support.

“When I look at how quickly we are able to leverage skills internally within our firm to help organizations with things they’d have to otherwise pay out-of-pocket to accomplish on their own, it’s remarkable,” says Fabia Stocken, on the Corporate Philanthropy team. “These are things we’re able to turn around in 24 hours – and that’s a massive thing we’re able to offer in terms of partnership.”

As cultural venues around the world closed their doors last year, the agility of Bloomberg’s partnership was brought to bear. The team scaled up their digital marketing efforts alongside partners and accelerated the onboarding of new partners to keep audiences engaged during lockdown.

It takes a village

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Arts team worked with Bloomberg employees across User Experience (UX), Marketing, Corporate Philanthropy, and Engineering — not to mention 500+ employees across the firm who have acted as guide test volunteers.

For Bloomberg LP employees, working on the app has offered professional stretch opportunities at every turn, with insight into new sectors, new problem sets to solve for, and new audiences to consider.

“My first reaction was, honestly, ‘how cool is this?’” says Carl Fischer, marketing lead for the Bloomberg Connects app, after being tapped to join the project. “To have the opportunity to work on something that is a personal passion, and use my skills – and develop new ones – for something good is not just a great growth opportunity, it’s also uniquely Bloomberg.”

“Design and engineering have really built up a team together in a way that is truly combined,” says David Harding. “We operate using a scrum model, as many teams at Bloomberg do, but we’re doing it with design and engineering together.”

One major UX hurdle the team overcame was satisfying two different audiences with two different needs: the content managers at the cultural institutions themselves. App users expect behavior and navigation to be consistent from one guide to the next, while cultural institutions want to express the unique look and feel of their brand. 

“We’re able to give them research-based advice when it comes to some of the mechanics, like using a 30-second video over a three-minute video,” says Fahd Arshad in UX. “Those things we can learn over time and share with them. But the content, the narrative is theirs.”

As the doors of cultural organizations on the Bloomberg Connects app begin to reopen their doors, apps like the one developed by the team at Bloomberg may serve as a bona fide safety feature. They may allow guests to navigate spaces and read interpretive information without huddling around wall maps or placards, or sharing audio headsets among guests. But while at home, the app still opens up doors to the world’s greatest cultural institutions, whenever we need to feel transported.