The YOMU cultural challenge: using play to bring people back to museums

What if a mobile game could bring people back to museums more often?

At YOMU, we start from a simple observation: many people would like to be more interested in art, but do not know where to start. The codes feel complex, time is scarce, and museum visits are often seen as occasional events rather than regular habits.

Our mission is clear: make cultural discovery simpler, more playful and more accessible, while giving people a concrete reason to visit museums more often. This is the spirit behind the YOMU cultural challenge, a programme that directly connects mobile gameplay with onsite visits.

One cultural capsule a day, in clear language

The YOMU app sends users a daily cultural capsule that breaks down:

• an artwork,
• an artist,
• an art movement,
• or a technique.

The tone is deliberately accessible, using clear, jargon-free language so as not to exclude people who feel “far” from the museum world.

Learning by doing: a quiz after every capsule

Each capsule ends with a 5-question quiz. The goal is not to make users feel tested, but to reinforce what they have just discovered.

We retain only a small portion of what we read passively, but a much larger share of what we actively put into practice. By embedding quiz mechanics into the experience, YOMU turns users into active participants in their own learning rather than passive readers.

The result: a more regular relationship with art, a richer vocabulary, stronger mental landmarks – and a growing desire to see artworks “in real life”.

The YOMU cultural challenge: rewarding action with museum visits

To go one step further, we decided to link this daily practice directly to more frequent museum visits. This is where the YOMU cultural challenge comes in.

The rules are straightforward:

• On the 1st and 15th of each month, we give away museum tickets.
• One ticket goes to the top player over the period (the user who scored the most points).
• A second ticket is randomly drawn among all participants who played quizzes.

In other words, the more users play, discover and learn, the more likely they are to win a museum visit. Gameplay becomes a direct lever to turn interest into physical attendance.

A direct lever to encourage museum visits

For museums, this programme offers several benefits:

• Driving attendance: by offering museum tickets through the challenge, we encourage users to plan a visit to a cultural venue.
• Preparing visitors in advance: users arrive with references, vocabulary and curiosity already nurtured by capsules and quizzes.
• Creating loyalty: winners are encouraged to return, introduce the museum to friends and family, and extend the experience through YOMU.

The challenge does not replace museums’ own mediation efforts: it complements them by building a bridge between users’ everyday digital habits and the physical collections.

Over 300 users already engaged

The YOMU community is growing every week, with more than 300 users already discovering art through the app and playing quizzes. The cultural challenge taps into this user base to:

• encourage them to move from mobile to museum;
• and give them new reasons to schedule a cultural visit.

How museums can join the programme

Our ambition is to co-design this challenge with partner institutions. In practice, a museum can:

• offer tickets as part of the YOMU challenge, highlighting a specific exhibition or collection;
• suggest dedicated content (capsules, quizzes) linked to its own works;
• benefit from increased visibility among a user base already motivated by cultural discovery.

By joining the challenge, the museum becomes a natural destination for users who have integrated daily art discovery into their routine through YOMU.

Conclusion: using play to put museums back into people’s everyday lives

The YOMU cultural challenge pursues a simple goal: encourage people to go to museums more often, while giving them the tools to understand what they see.

By combining educational capsules, playful quizzes and rewards in the form of museum visits, we create a virtuous circle: I discover, I play, I win… and I go to the museum.

If you are a cultural institution and would like to learn more about this programme or explore a partnership, our team would be delighted to talk.