museumsandtheweb.com - location awareness

A new app for a new museum: Museum of Contemporary Art Australia

Keir Winesmith — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 03:42:28 +0000

MW2012

Keywords:

Contemporary art museums

Keywords:

smart phones

Keywords:

museums online

Keywords:

WiFi

Keywords:

location awareness

Keywords:

location aware mobile computing

Abstract:

Australia's Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) is rebuilding, physically and digitally. The entire museum is being refurbished, a new wing is being added and the museum is doubling in size. We are taking advantage of the building work to add WiFi access points to every room in the building and we are creating a smartphone app, with rich artist-lead content, that uses these access points to enrich the post-visit experience and provide emergent location awareness while in the museum.

As visitors navigate the MCA, lead by curiosity, the suggestions of friends or a themed tour within the app, the app will indicate which works are in close proximity. There is a mixture of text, audio, video and image galleries for each work, depending on what content best contextualises the work for the visitor and the relationship that the MCA's curators have with the artist who created the work. One of the great benefits of working at a museum of contemporary art is active engagement with creators.

The app is part of an overall interpretation strategy that flows from wall label, to app, to web and finally to catalogue in terms of amount and depth of content. As such, visitors will be able to build their own collection during their visit and, if they choose, will be provided with a unique webpage on the MCA's website that reflects their visit. The location awareness built into the WiFi network will be leveraged to build a stylised rendering of their visit, alongside web friendly content about the works in their collection - such as long form video interviews with artists, detailed curatorial interpretation, educational resources, artist biographies and artist statements. This online diary of the visitor's trip to the MCA is theirs to investigate further, share and come back too.

The MCA is currently looking into how it can enrich visitor's online diary with further information. Information such as publications about, or by, the artists featured in the visitor's collection, other works by these artist in the MCA's online collection that are not currently on display or highlights of rooms that the visitor missed entirely.

The app will also feature the usual museum contact and location information, visitation advice and a calendar of events and exhibitions.

The MCA re-opens and the app launches at the end of March and I hope to demonstrate the app less than a month later at Museums and the Web 2012.

Type:

Demonstration - show your project

MW2012 Demonstrations II

Site:

http://www.mca.com.au

Authors:

Keir Winesmith

Explorer - Mobile Navigation and Interpretation at the American Museum of Natural History

lperrylube — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:08:15 +0000

MW2011

Linda Perry-Lube and Melissa Lefkowitz, American Museum of Natural History, USA

http://www.amnh.org/apps/explorer.php

Abstract

This paper advocates a visitor-centric approach to designing a solution for navigation and interpretation. The American Museum of Natural History iPhone application Explorer combines state of the art location awareness, interpretation, and social networking to deliver an enhanced visitor experience both onsite and online. AMNH had four objectives with this project: to facilitate visitor navigation, to provide an application that appeals to visitors and encourages repeat visits, to enhance exhibit information without detracting from the exhibits themselves; and to anneal visitors' onsite and online experiences. This paper examines the reasoning behind utilizing a mobile device for wayfinding; the choice of the iPhone platform; the challenge of bringing "GPS indoors" and the resultant technical solution; feature set determination and usability; the role of mobile devices in the pre- and post-Museum visit continuum; the challenges of curated mobile content creation; deploying the application on Museum-supplied devices and through the iTunes store; and marketing of the device and app. The authors present the challenges faced by the American Museum of Natural History in executing a cross-Museum enterprise and share lessons learned, in order to offer the wider museum community an opportunity to build on our experience and expertise.

Keywords: mobile, iphone app, location awareness, digital mobile museum tour, mobile exhibition, wayfinding

Program Item Reference:

Explorer - Mobile Navigation and Interpretation at the American Museum of Natural History

lperrylube — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:51:59 +0000

MW2011

Published Paper:

Explorer - Mobile Navigation and Interpretation at the American Museum of Natural History

Keywords:

wayfinding

Keywords:

explorer

Keywords:

navigation

Keywords:

application

Keywords:

iphone

Keywords:

iTouch

Keywords:

mobile phones

Keywords:

collection

Keywords:

downloadable

Keywords:

digital mobile museum tour

Keywords:

location awareness

Abstract:

This paper advocates a visitor-centric approach to designing a solution for navigation and interpretation. The American Museum of Natural History iPhone application Explorer combines state of the art location awareness, interpretation, and social networking to deliver an enhanced visitor experience both onsite and online. AMNH had three objectives with this project: to facilitate visitor navigation, to provide an application that appeals to visitors and encourages repeat visits, and to enhance exhibit information without detracting from the exhibits themselves. This paper examines the reasoning behind utilizing a mobile device for wayfinding; the choice of the iPhone platform; the challenge of bringing “GPS indoors” and the resultant technical solution; feature set determination and usability; the role of mobile devices in the pre- and post-Museum visit continuum; the challenges of curated mobile content creation; deploying the application on Museum-supplied devices and through the iTunes store; and marketing of the device and app. We will present the challenges faced by AMNH in executing a cross-Museum enterprise and share lessons learned, in order to offer the wider museum community an opportunity to build on our experience and expertise.

Type:

Paper - in formal session

Mobile Parade

Site:

http://www.amnh.org/apps/explorer.php

Authors:

Linda Perry-Lube

Melissa Lefkowitz