Enhancing Tour Guide Systems with Semantic Knowledge Management Platform

The rapid adoption of the Internet, mobile devices, smart phones, touch boards and social networks enable new methods for enhancing visitor experience in museums, galleries, thematic parks and cities through the use web and handheld device applications. However, the transition from legacy tour guides to the new media era, pose key challenges in adapting, managing and publishing content to multiple evolving platforms as well as fitting it to address the diverse target audience needs. There is no cross platform content management system with the ability to link the right content to different visitor profiles and interact with them real time.

Based on years of research of cultural institutions’ exhibitions seeking a balance between the transmission of curatorial expertise and the ways different visitors interpret their intentions, we developed XENAGOS, a holistic knowledge management platform for dynamically adapting and publishing content to any media based on visitor profiles and real time feedback. The platform links existing collection management systems and tour-guide apps in a way that allows curators to store their knowledge in a semantic database, manage exhibit correlations to other exhibits, or exhibition space, or administer exhibits and tours relative to visitor preferences, educational level, time constraints, etc. As a result, XENAGOS allows cultural institutions to preserve investment in content despite the changes of technology and media platforms.

During this session we will present to you use cases of actual deployments covering different peculiarities and needs of museums and how XENAGOS addressed them beyond expectations from tour guide initial adoption to production. Topics will include, content knowledge structuring, management and upkeep; cross platform publishing; smart phone provisioning for way-finding apps or 2-way dialog with visitors; and real time statistics gathering and reporting. All of the above highlight XENAGOS scalable foundation philosophy supporting a vision for transitioning the vast heritage of cultural institutions into a knowledge management and proliferation platform for the new media era.