How Beacons can add

Interactivity to Museums

Ravi Pratap

Co-founder & CTO

MobStac

Beaconstac Webinar

Al Juarez

VP – Sales & Marketing

GeLo

Today’s webinar

1. What is iBeacon technology?

2. How beacons can enhance the museum experience

1. Museum use cases

1. Things to consider before deploying beacons

1. Learning from successful museum deployments

What are beacons?

• Low-cost, low-power transmitters equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE

(also called Bluetooth 4.0 or Bluetooth Smart)

• Helps mobile devices detect proximity and determine micro-location

How beacons work

Beacons don’t transmit content; they transmit a series of numbers

• The transmitted signal allows another device to identify it and determine the

device’s proximity to the beacon

How beacons can enhance museum experiences

Deliver

contextual

information

Social

media

outreach

Enhance

Interactivity

beyond audio

Gather

behavioral

data

Gather visitor

data

Putting beacons to use in museums

Ticketless

entry

Information

about facilities

available

Recommend

exhibits

Upsell mementos,

gifts from the

souvenir shop

1. Beacon installation

o Purchase beacons - consider color, design, power options

o Configure - ‘major’ and ‘minor’ numbers

o Placement - must be unobtrusive

1. Visitor position not really precise

o Factor in beacon signal interference

o Use proximity, instead of a precise set of coordinates

Things to keep in mind

3. Management and monitoring

o Track data coming from multiple beacons

o Monitor beacons for battery life and last ping time

o Consider using a beacon platform

4. Security

o Change major/minor numbers frequently and encrypt them

o Detect unauthorized authentication attempts

o Set up a mechanism that sends timely firmware updates and

security notifications

Things to keep in mind (contd.)

How we helped a museum pilot beacons - 1

The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

New York

Adding beacons using the

Beaconstac CMS

How we helped a museum pilot beacons - 2

Compose Rules

Set Actions

How we helped a museum pilot beacons - 3

Proximity based information-trigger

• UX – What experience are you trying to create?

• Density and spacing of beacons

• Trigger spot vs. Beacon location

• Start small

Considerations in real world deployment

Grand Rapids Public Museum - Collect A-Z Scavenger

Hunt

Success stories of beacons in museums

ArtPrize - Site:Lab at The Morton House

Success stories of beacons in museums

About GeLo

GeLo has helped museums become more interactive through the use of GeLo

Bluetooth Smart beacons. GeLo has worked with the Grand Rapids Public

Museum, ArtPrize 2013 and ArtPrize 2014 using beacon technology to share

additional content with museum visitors and art lovers in the digital age.

Beaconstac Eddystone Platform

• UNLIMITED user interactions

• Integrated with Google Analytics

• Rules-based rotating URLs

• Custom Domain

• Customer Support

Questions?