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How Tech Is Changing the MuseumExperience

September 14, 2011 by Aliza Sherman

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Museums are exploring digital and mobile technologies toenhance visitor experience. Initiatives go beyond technologywithin exhibits and installations, but also include morepervasive uses of tech to create interactive experiences forvisitors throughout a museum, as well as remote experiencesfor those who cannot get there.

Here, we highlight what three museums are doing to makethe experience interactive, educational and engaging.

The Smithsonian — Washington, DC

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One of the leaders in the space of digital and mobile tech in museums is the Smithsonian. Its initiatives run thegamut from more “traditional” cellphone tours to mobile apps to crowdsourcing to interactive gaming and evenaugmented reality. Nancy Proctor, head of mobile strategy and intiatives at the Smithsonian, publishes widelyon the topic of mobile in museums and is often cited by other museums as a main source of learning andinspiration on the topic.

The Smithsonian has an array of mobile apps and websites that allow museum visitors to interact as they gothrough an exhibit or to experience the exhibit remotely. Apps include Infinity of Nations for the NationalMuseum of the American Indian, which provides an English and Spanish mobile tour, and includes slideshowsand video in versions for both children and adults. Another is called Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers(produced using the Toura apps platform) that provides an overview and insights into select art pieces with hi-res images, video, audio and quotes directly from the artist. This app traveled with the exhibition to the WalkerArt Center, and they were able to add more content to the app specific to their own installation of the show.

The Set in Style iPad application showcases 65 of the 350 objects on view in an exhibition at the Cooper-HewittNational Design Museum in New York, including jewels, timepieces, and fashion accessories by Van Cleef &Arpels. The app Artists in Dialogue 2 for the National Museum of African Art provides a mobile tour in Englishand Brazilian Portuguese, led by curator Karen Milbourne and the artists — Sandile Zulu and Henrique Oliveira.They discuss the the art, their fellow artists and and their collaborative process. A user can also join the relatedconversation via Twitter, test their knowledge of South Africa and Brazil, and even experiment virtually with theartists’ technique in a built-in game.

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The Smithsonian released a crowdsourcing app called LeafSnap that encourages users on the EasternSeaboard to take photographs of leaves with their smartphones, identify trees from a vast database and thenupload these to a central location, automatically tagged with GPS coordinates. The data helps give researchersa better picture of the distribution of species across the region while also honing people’s skills and knowledgein identifying trees in a fun way.

With an augmented reality app in review at the Apple store, The Smithsonian has a proof-of-concept for workingwith a 3D AR model with several additional AR projects in the works. Regarding geo-location in museums,Proctor points to the limitations of GPS within buildings. Most of the Smithsonian apps that can be used inconjunction with exhibits require a manual trigger by the visitor, such as typing in a number from a label on anexhibit sign.

However, Proctor sees a lot of potential in combining various indoor positioning systems to help visitors findtheir way and to access additional content. The Smithsonian is working with Wi-Fi-based solutions and visualrecognition systems like Google Goggles. Visual recognition works well on 2D images, says Proctor, but is stillchallenging for 3D objects. Still, visual recognition systems (VRS) can be more cost-effective indoor positioningsolutions for museums that have Wi-Fi. Many can leverage their existing and often comprehensive photographsof galleries and collection objects to do location matching.

“VR and AR are the two most interesting and most likely to be fruitful new technologies for museums simplybecause you’re able to enhance what someone is seeing through their phone,” explains Proctor. “For visitors,holding up their camera to scan an object of interest is a natural gesture — the same action as taking a photo.If that gesture triggers delivery of content to better understand something, it is a better, more organicexperience,” Proctor explains.

For any in-museum digital or mobile initiative, the challenge becomes bandwidth, says Proctor. “There needs tobe a Wi-FI high speed connection to enable the transfer of the image from the visitor’s camera phone to theimage databases and then to return content to go with that location. This requires installation of access points,wiring — and in some museums, that is not possible or doesn’t work very well.” Proctor cites historic buildingslike the Louvre, where the gold leaf interior makes Wi-Fi radio signals bounce in certain areas as well as“concrete bunker”-style museums where Wi-Fi is a challenge.

Proctor is excited about the two-way and multi-way nature of using social media and mobile in the museumexperience versus typical one-way narrowcasting, and of the exchange of commentary, opinions, ideas andresponses to collections, themes and concepts. She says that the networked nature of mobile today makes ita social media platform, in contrast to the traditional audio tour, and those mobile conversations help make themuseum and its messages more sustainable.

The Smithsonian’s mobile strategy is available on a wiki, and additional resources about mobile and museumsare available online and managed by Proctor. She welcomes feedback and collaboration on the development ofnext generation mobile for museums.

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The Museum of Jewish Heritage — New York City

On September 19th, The Museum of Jewish Heritage will launch a free mobile walking tour app that gives usersa glimpse into Gilded Age New York as seen through the eyes of Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus, thesubject of the museum’s fall exhibition. The app, Emma Lazarus: Poet of Exiles, A Companion Walking Tour,includes 19 historic sites in lower Manhattan, Greenwich Village, Union Square, Chinatown, Chelsea, Midtownand the East River.

The tour was produced using Tristan Interactive’s platform, Autour, and includes GPS recognition and a map.Each stop will consist of annotated historic tour sites, a slideshow, and audio commentary. Actress JuliannaMargulies narrates the tour, and the app also includes a reading by Meryl Streep of Emma’s most famouspoem, “The New Colossus,” which appears on the bronze base of the Statue of Liberty (which is pictured below,as shown in the app).

“We were going to conduct an actual walking tour of Emma Lazarus’ New York, and I was at a presentation

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about mobile apps in museums and a light went off in my head. It seemed the perfect marriage,” says AliceRubin, senior project manager at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Rubin says she read up on mobile apps formuseums and attended several conferences and online webinars about the growing use of apps in museumsand heritage sites.

Once the app is launched, the user can see what tour sites are in close proximity or travel to the sites in anyorder. Some are within walking distance, but many are located in different parts of the city. At a location, userscan listen to the audio narration and view photographs from 19th century New York City, including illustrationsand images of the buildings and structures that once stood at that location. The tour also features audiocommentary from experts, including curator Melissa Martens, a biographer and historian. Locations includeDelmonico’s Restaurant and The Century Building, home of the literary journal The Century, where many ofEmma’s articles about immigrant causes were published and which is now a Barnes & Noble store.

Powerhouse Museum — Sydney, Australia

When it comes to experimenting with new technology, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney Australia has beendoing it for several years now, documenting their explorations and learning on a blog. They’ve hosted developerhack days where experimental applications have been built using their collection API and when Layar firstlaunched, a Sydney-based AR company called Mob Labs developed an AR layer of historical photography forthe museum.

Inside the museum, they are starting to use iPads to replace LCD and plasmas for audio/visual displays, andthey’ve found the smaller screens result in a closer engagement between museum visitor and content. They’vealso deployed touchscreen games on iPads versus traditional touchscreens, and are getting a higher usagerate among visitors.

The Powerhouse has been experimenting with the mobile web for a few years now, and recently incorporatedQR codes in the Love Lace exhibit. There is also the Love Lace App that can be used in the gallery to add aninformation layer for visitors without overwhelming the exhibition design with text. The Love Lace website servesas a hub for before and after visiting the museum.

Additional apps in their repertoire include one for their annual Sydney Design Festival, and another for cross-agency school holiday planning.

“I like to think that at the Powerhouse, we’ve been looking a little further than most by thinking about andprototyping the use of mobile and social technologies as a way of rethinking the entire notion of a ‘museumvisit,’” says Sebastian Chan, head of digital, social and emerging technologies at the Powerhouse Museum.“Obviously, once a visitor can access almost any ‘facts’ on the device they carry in their pocket, the idea that amuseum should be about ‘facts’ is almost made redundant. This opens up a whole lot of possibilities for

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making museum exhibitions far more immersive and experiential, leaving the ‘fact’ layer for mobile and onlinedelivery either during or before and after the gallery visit.”

The museum’s strategic plan is available online, and it mentions “cross platform content delivery,” embracing“open access” and being an “open museum,” ensuring the content they create is available both in-gallery andonline, and where possible, with open license to re-use.

As more museums look to engage visitors in new, more pervasive ways, implementing technologies to leveragesmartphones and other mobile devices will not only become more prevalent but more effective over time.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter, t-lorien

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20 Comments

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Tech10,610 followers

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Appmosphere Kirchhoff FollowFollow

Who says museums are stodgy?

September 14, 2011 10:04:47 Reply 0

Mohawk Greene FollowFollow

A museum experience that suits my lifestyle

September 14, 2011 10:24:07 Reply 0

iwasnteventhere FollowFollow

Surely museums are one of the few places where our lives aren’t dominated by devices? We need to taketime with the objects in museums rather than looking at screens.

It’s not surprising that brands are all over this because it’s a way for them to get advertising into the museumwhich by it’s nature is generally resistant to advertising.

It would be good if people didn’t just passively accept everything that is fed to them

September 14, 2011 10:31:43 Reply 0

Robert Catalano FollowFollow

Eh..cool I guess..but I’d rather the hands on experience at museums without the mobile tech.You learn betterthat way.

September 14, 2011 10:56:14 Reply 0

Pete P FollowFollow

The New Acropolis Museum needs a similar app

September 14, 2011 11:11:02 Reply 0

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daddacool FollowFollow

In a way, the mass redundancies across curatorial staff at national and local levels int he UK reflect thistechnological shift. Museums are rapidly becoming places where the in situ collection is displayed andconsumed. The expertise to interprete and reinteprete objects is being lost.

Our local museum is currently culling its curatorial staff, most of whom have 2 or 3 degrees relevant to theprofession and a professional museum qualification. The front of house staff, the people who man the tillsin the shop and so on are safe of course, but the wealth of experience is being lost.

Maybe the funding issues are as bad in the USA as they are here but an object without good interpretation ispretty meaningless IMHO, and without the ongoing input of those trained professionals, I see a bleak futurefor UK museums :(

September 14, 2011 11:29:39 Reply 0

kevinelliott FollowFollow

Museums have been embracing technology over the last 5 years quite seriously. They’ve organizedthemselves in such a way that they’re encouraging each other to do so by way of museotechnologyconferences. I’m wildly excited about the opportunities ahead, and at the end of the day I do believe that it willbe the visitors that benefit. It’s all a lot of fun, and it makes learning wildly fun.

September 14, 2011 12:57:10 Reply 1

Jennifer White FollowFollow

As a museum educator, I’m welcoming the ‘devices’ into our collections. There is so much more informationavailable than we can put on printed materials or than people have the willingness to read.

When we can have live tour guides it brings a dimension to the museum experience that is valuable.However we can’t provide a live guide for every visitor.

The interactivity of the various devices and platforms lets us get the museum goer much more information ina variety of formats, so that they can consume the information in a manner that’s comfortable. Visitors whoare not comfortable with the devices don’t need to use them, they can continue to interact with our exhibits asthey always have.

September 14, 2011 13:43:46 Reply 3

exhibitly FollowFollow

Very well put. Mobile technology in museums should be ‘in addition to’ and not ‘replacing’ thecurrent panels and staff.

September 15, 2011 09:05:46 Reply 0

Jonathan Salem Baskin FollowFollow

Wow…an article about mobile tech in museums written by a vendor who sells mobile tech. How is it that wecan’t think about technology independent of a bias toward selling it? Museums are inherently social andexperiential in ways that technology cannot even begin to mimic, and perhaps the last things we need inreal-world museum settings are devices presuming to mediate those social experiences. If we want visitorsto stare at screens, they can do that in their boxers at home.

September 14, 2011 19:17:59 Reply 0

alizasherman FollowFollow

Actually, the article was written by me. i’m a smartphone owner (iPhone) and huge fan of social,mobile, AR, QR codes, and other technologies, and I love going to museums. My day job is writing,teaching, speaking and occasionally consulting about social, mobile and digital tech.

What I especially loved about writing this piece was being provided a list of topics – I picked “tech inmuseums” – then given carte blanche to discover and write about what I found compelling. I had somuch material that it was really hard to cut it all down to fit this piece so I hope I get the chance towrite more. So many great stories to tell.

I wouldn’t say museums are inherently social at all – viewing an exhibit can often be a solitaryendeavor as each person experiences it differently. Tech isn’t meant to mimic but to augmentexhibits and museum experiences in sometimes familiar but also unexpected ways.

Museum visitors have been staring at labels, placards, and signs for years not to mention touchscreens, movie screens, television screens and other electronic panels in more recent decades.Space and resources within museums are limited. Being able to bring more information aboutexhibits and museums with you on a smartphone or mobile device, I think, is exciting!

September 14, 2011 19:48:14 Reply 0

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exhibitly FollowFollow

Exciting indeed! Great article.

September 15, 2011 09:08:24 0

sebchan FollowFollow

I’ve blogged an ‘extended remix’ with two questions from the writer, Aliza Sherman, which didn’t make thefinal cut of the article which provide some additional context and respond directly to some of the commentshere.

http://bit.ly/qNoHbM

At the Powerhouse Museum we’re very aware of the need to keep track of any (positive &) negative impactsof mobile technology in the museum itself. At the same time we’re always exploring ways to expand thereach and impact of the museum beyond those who walk in the doors, as well as more deeply engagethose who do. For me this is all about reframing the very idea of a ‘museum’ as something much more thana building but a ‘building and a meeting place and a platform for the community and a broadcaster and apublisher”. Think of it as Museum+.

September 14, 2011 20:57:54 Reply 0

Marc Bowers FollowFollow

Interesting

September 14, 2011 23:53:38 Reply 0

exhibitly FollowFollow

Mobile technology in museums today is definitely an exciting new opportunity for visitors to discover andlearn more about the exhibits they are viewing while they are viewing them. If done correctly it can create avery interactive experience and gives visitors who want this type of interaction a platform to extend theirknowledge and share it with their social graph.

We have to be cautious when creating applications as the goal is not to distract the visitor from the exhibit,but rather to offer a platform where they are encouraged to look closer, learn more, and discover what theymay not have seen.

What is lacking in today’s offerings is a community. Current apps are ‘singular’ in nature, meaning you canonly access the content from one museum with one app. Each facility requires you to download and learn anew app (assuming one is available). Connecting with other guests and sharing your reflections, interests,or favorite exhibits is non-existent. Bridging this gap is the key to enhancing the cultural experience andopening the door for visitors to discover facility and exhibits that they may not have known ever existed.

September 15, 2011 09:21:40 Reply 0

KadmeAS FollowFollow

We developed an interactive map for the Norwegian Petroleum Museum that allows museum visitors tovisualize offshore oil and gas infrastructure such as pipes, platforms, and wells with news articles and factpages from the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. The map can also be used by the general public fromoutside the museum, as well – it brings the installations and specific aspects of the information they cover tolife! Available in Norwegian and English at http://www.petroleumskartet.no

September 16, 2011 04:42:37 Reply 0

Jennifer Haggerty FollowFollow

So cool that museums are doing this :)

September 16, 2011 19:36:47 Reply 0

Silvia Hendrix FollowFollow

My museum is run by local government. I would like to know is there any funding or grants to access use ofthe newer technologies. Our facebook open page has generated over 2000 new members in the last twomonths.

September 23, 2011 15:32:03 Reply 0

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OnCell_Mobile FollowFollow

Hi Mobile Technology Learners! OnCell can help your site bring powerful & interactive mobile experiences toyour visitors through their own cell phones, smartphones and tablets. You upload the content, we provide theaccess methods. Our technology allows you to communicate with your visitors using fun, interactive mobiletools. Whether it’s a cell phone tour, mobile web tour, mobile survey, scavenger hunt or mobile givingcampaign, OnCell makes it easy for you to upload audio & multimedia to our content management system.Visit http://www.oncellsystems.com for more information! :)

September 28, 2011 15:45:44 Reply 0

mediasunrise FollowFollow

I’m currently doing volunteer work for the Museum of Jewish Heritage and thought it was worth mentioningthat they have several interesting exhibits that making use of innovative technology. Voices of Liberty allowsmuseum visitors to hear the moving personal stories from various immigrants as they describe theexperience of leaving their previous homeland for America. The exhibit was designed for both a personaland communal experience, since everyone in your “zone” hears the same stories, which becomes moreobvious when you start to share facial expressions with your friends. And the spectacular view of the Statueof Liberty from MJH really completes the experience. If you haven’t already seen it, I recommend that you visitthe museum. Voices of Liberty is an ongoing project where anyone can add their story.http://www.mjhnyc.org/khc/voices/ Clearly I was very moved by the experience.

January 18, 2012 10:35:01 Reply 0

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