Interesting report from NEA on
How Americans Use Electronic Media to Participate in the Arts
When compared with non-media participants, Americans who participate in the arts through technology and electronic media - using the Internet, television, radio, computers, and handheld devices - are nearly three times more likely to attend live arts events; attend twice as many live arts events; and attend a greater variety of genres of live arts events.
The Dallas Museum of Art has launched its smARTphone Tour application this week and I wanted to write a series of blog posts outlining what we have developed and how everything works. The SmartPhone tours are a culmination of over a year of work, a completed prototype, a bunch of brainstorming and discussion across several museums and most importantly, user evaluation.
SmARTphone Tours are provided as a mobile web app… that is it works on any web-enabled device. Use your Blackberry, iPhone, Pre, G1 or whatever you use to access additional museum content including audio, video, additional images and content for free. Don’t have a smartphone? We have iPod Touches available at both visitor services desks. We’ve also got headphones if you’d like them for your own device.
SmARTphone Tours can be accessed at http://dallasmuseumofart.mobi
It important to note that this is a mobile optimized web platform and not an iPhone app. This has been our plan all along to NOT be device dependent. Our priority at the museum is the quality of the content we produce. We view the mobile platform as a delivery system to get the content out. While there are certainly advantages to doing apps as well – the web based solution was the best choice for us in terms of support and accessibility.
Now I have to admit something. I thought that without provided iPods, we wouldn’t have as much interest in the web app. For whatever reason I just thought people would rather do tours on provided devices. Last night we did a soft launch at the museum with the opening our our Lens of Impressionism exhibit. The decision was that the iPod Touch units we have available wouldn’t actually be launched until Sunday. But all the signage was up and we’ve had some press promoting the tour. People could just pull it up on their own phones. I was completely blown away when I got to the museum to see people on all kinds of phones not only curiously checking out the web app, but also in the exhibit taking it all in! This makes hard work and insanely crazy hours all worth it.
I think the strongest “sell” for systems like this in museums is the transparent nature of the whole thing. You can walk around and access additional information that you want and customize what additional stuff you want to see. There’s not a lot of touch screens or kiosks out in the galleries that could actually be viewed as distractions at times. Its a completely personalized experience. You want additional content – we have it. If you don’t want additional content you won’t see it. Want some quiet time with some amazing art? There’s not a noisy film or kiosk distracting you.
This is the first in a series of blog posts that I am creating explaining how everything works. Next time I’ll get more into the technical side of things… but before I wrap this one up…
I get emails constantly asking when this will be done and if it will be open source.
We developed the prototype for this that “soft launched” last summer. This enabled us to go thru the whole process, do user evaluations and tweak some more before our official launch. This is where we are now. The entire thing will be open sourced as planned all along. We have some clean up and tweaking to do to the backend, and should have the whole thing packaged in the next 2-3 months.
And if you’re really curious, I’ll be speaking at Museums and the Web this year in Colorado on a panel discussion of various mobile solutions with several other institutions. Speaking of…
Some serious shout outs and thank you props to a few of my colleagues that we an invaluable resource to this project. Rob Stein, Charlie Moad and the rest of the awesome development crew at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. This is one of the most talented, prolific and awesomely generous bunch of tech guys in our field. Their work is consistently nothing short of stunning and their generosity and willing to share is extremely humbling.
Also thanks to Chris Alexander who now works as an independent museum consultant. Back in his days at the San Jose Museum of Art he developed one of the first mobile museum tours. He’s a super cool guy even if he has to bail on a podcast early to go to the beach…
And finally a super big thanks to Nancy Proctor at the Smithsonian… Nancy heads up the MuseumMobile project and literally knows everyone at every museum in the world and knows every mobile project and prototype in existence. Thank you Nancy for your support, kindness, and generosity. If there is someone who selflessly brings our community together and tirelessly evangelizes the advancement of technology and practice in our profession, and how it makes sense creating a fulfilling experience to users and visitors – this is Nancy.
More to come…
We have a Late Night event tonight and I've seen quite a few visitors ask for iPods so they can enjoy the new smARTphone Tour for Lens of Impressionism (a first). We tested this week and tours are looking GOOD -- and super-fast over the DMA wireless!
Our own Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art on WFAA yesterday. Nice :)
http://www.wfaa.com/good-morning-texas/The-Lens-of-Impressionism-at-the-...
We begin performance testing for two new smart phone tours (approximately 20 stops each) on Feb 1. All accessible via http://DallasMuseumofArt.mobi. We roll out to the public in three weeks -- woohoo!
Leave it to the Japanese:
In Japan, a new iPhone application is being used to help visitors navigate their way through a museum and to find data on the exhibitions.
Developers Tonchidot's Sekai Camera app enables users to tag things they want others to see.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8214219.stm
Chris Alexander of the San Jose Museum of Art & Ted Forbes of the DMA discuss development of iPod Touch tours for their museums: from wireless networks, to interfaces, to back-end content management and signage in the galleries.
We have finally launched the new primary Web site. We still have some tweaks and minor debugging to plow through, but we are "live" and rockin' a new look and new functionality. We begin usability testing at the end of the month.
Podcast on DMA, Smithsonian, IMA collaboration on an open source mobile content delivery interface
http://dallasmuseumofart.tv/mobile/
Mobile Museum Wiki
http://museummobile.info/
