MuseumApp

What is the MuseumApp?

The MuseumApp is a new product for museums in which a museum can easily create and publish interactive tours for smart phones. The MuseumApp is the first Dutch initiative that bundles mobile tours for different museums together in one app. This way museums can learn and benefit from each other, sharing their collection and knowledge and expanding their reach. The app brings users into direct contact with local heritage and offers new forms of interactions, both inside and outside the museum.  In that way museums can connect their collections to the city.

This is how it works

Museums can have their own channel in the MuseumApp in which they can publish tours with location-based information. Locations can contain pictures, video clips, sound clips, assignments, surveys or a combination. GPS will guide the user from one location to another. Users have the ability to share their experience of the tours directly via Twitter and Facebook as well.

 The Amsterdam Museum

The Amsterdam Museum was the launching partner for the development of the MuseumApp. The MuseumApp itself is a very useful tool for museums to make their own interactive tours. With the online Tourmaker we can easily make tours for ourselves. The first tours we've made were for our new permanent exhibition called Amsterdam DNA. We made a connection with the stories and topics we tell inside the museum and with the locations where these stories took place. Besides giving us the chance to make these tours, the MuseumApp gives the opportunity to share experiences and our collection with other museums in the MuseumApp as well. We like the idea of the MuseumApp as a platform that bundles all these tours museums make. Currently there are several museums in Amsterdam participating in the MuseumApp and on several occasions we came together and discussed our tours. The MuseumApp plans to reach museums from other cities to participate in the MuseumApp, so in that way we can share more information and offering the user a wide range of interactive tours in which they can choose. Tours that brings the user closer to local heritage.

Development of the App and online Tourmaker: 7scenes.
Research and design: Waag Society.
Launching partner: Amsterdam Museum.

Screenshots:

1. Example of a tour in the MuseumApp. GPS will guide the users from one location to another

2. The MuseumApp bundles tours from different museums. Each museum has their own channel in the App.

3. Visitors who are using one of the tours the Amsterdam Museum has made.  The user is making a photo which they can share directly via Facebook and Twitter,

4. Example of a video clip in one of our tours.

5. Example of an opinion place in one of our tours.