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Delightfully Lost: A New Kind of Wayfinding at Kew
Natasha Waterson and Mike Saunders, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom
www.kew.org
Abstract
In October 2010, Kew Gardens commissioned an in-depth study of visitors’ motivations and information needs around its 300-acre site, with the express aim that it should guide the development of new mobile apps. The work involved over 1,500 visitor-tracking observations, 350 mini-interviews, 200 detailed exit interviews, and 85 fulfilment maps; and gave Kew an incredibly useful insight into its visitors’ wants, needs, and resulting behaviours.
It turns out that most Kew visitors have social, emotional, and spiritual, rather than intellectual, motivations during their time here. They do not come hoping to find out more, and they don’t want or need to know precisely where they are all the time. In fact, they love the sense of unguided exploration and the serendipitous discoveries they make at Kew—they want to become “delightfully lost.”
You’ve Gone Mobile, Now What?
This paper and presentation uses the experiences and research underway at both an art museum and a science museum to build on last year’s presentation, Getting On (Not Under) the Mobile 2.0 Bus.
Creating a mobile app ecosystem - the Genera project for iOS
At the start of 2011, Australia’s Museum Victoria (MV), published a Field Guide for Victorian Animals for iOS devices: iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The app currently contains information for approximately 650 Victorian animal species, including birds, mammals, snakes, lizards and frogs, as well as butterflies, snails, spiders and other invertebrates.
Interface content: it's not the size, but how you use it
Museums are increasingly looking for ways to connect to people on their own devices inside and outside of the museum space. Smartphones and tablets have helped drive the popular use of apps, traditional websites often don’t translate well to mobile devices, and increasingly, people are looking for a more immersive and creative online experience.
Delightfully lost: a new kind of wayfinding at Kew
In October 2010, Kew Gardens commissioned an in-depth study of visitors’ motivations and information needs around its 300 acre site, with the express aim that it should guide the development of new mobile apps.
Mobile Means Multi-Platform: Producing Content for the Fast-Changing Mobile Space
Erica Gangsei and Tim Svenonius, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, USA
Abstract
Starting in early 2009, SFMOMA embarked on an ambitious plan to bring the production, publishing and distribution of its mobile tour in-house. This meant investing in a fleet of Apple iPod Touches, scripting and producing hours of new audio and multimedia content, and adopting a new authoring system to custom craft the user experience.
In the months since we began developing the new tour, innovations in the mobile app space have grabbed tech headlines everywhere. More and more, users of iPhones and other mobile devices want to know: can I download this to my own phone? (or: Why can't I?) Had we started our development the following year, we might have revised our approach in light of the rapid evolutions taking place. Teeming masses of developers have descended on the app space and quickly made it clear that many distinct approaches to the mobile problem space are available and within reach.
Now, with our home-grown mobile tour in place, we need to design a streamlined approach to serving our visitors in-house both with our devices and their own. We also need to keep in mind the thousands of Web visitors who use and enjoy our online content via SFMOMA's website or RSS feeds – an audience potentially neglected as the emphasis shifts to the mobile space. How can we produce and publish multimedia content effectively in the mobile sphere? And how can we optimize content designed for in-gallery use when it may be experienced, via apps or the Web, far from the museum?
Finally, most of our mobile stops are published to multiple delivery platforms: 1) the in-house mobile multimedia tour, 2) download via RSS, 3) Guide-by-cell, and 4) an app for iPhone and Android platforms. Can we create a one-size-fits-all solution all mobile platforms? In this paper we'll explore the viability of platform-independent content for museums, discuss how content can be tailored to specific delivery platforms, and share some key considerations in repurposing Web content for mobile use and vice versa.
Keywords: Apps, RSS, in-house production, multi-media tour, multi-platform, on-site vs on-line
Mobile Means Multi-Platform: Producing Content for the Fast-Changing Mobile Space
Starting in early 2009, SFMOMA embarked on an ambitious plan to bring the production, publishing and distribution of its mobile tour in-house. This meant investing in a fleet of Apple iPod Touches, scripting and producing hours of new audio and multimedia content, and adopting a new authoring system to custom craft the user experience.
Getting on (not under) the Mobile 2.0 Bus
The use of visitors' own devices for mobile programs in museums, which began with podcasts and cellphone tours some years ago, has enjoyed a renewed popularity in the age of the smartphone. A recent survey of nearly 1,600 visitors to the Smithsonian on the National Mall found that over half (52%) had an Internet-enabled phone, and 30% had a phone that could play apps.
Casgliad y Werin Cymru - People’s Collection Wales: combining museum, library, archive, broadcaster and user-generated content to create “Wales in a website”.
Casgliad y Werin Cymru – The People’s Collection Wales is more than just a website, it is a collaborative and federated programme developed by national institutions to tell the story of a nation from the perspective of its people.