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 prefer and 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 is 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…
Hey Ted
Great write-up. I’m looking forward to more. The tour looks great and it’s now added to my homescreen via the included icon.
Regarding my leaving the podcast early to go to the beach – hey, that’s what Californians do! I bet living in Texas you’d leave a podcast early for a Barbeque! :0)
Thanks for the shoutout! I couldn’t agree more about IMA and Nancy!
Take care
Chris
Thanks Chris… see you at MAW in a few months!
Ted, Congratulations!! The tour is just wonderful, mainly because you have made quality content your priority. (Can we all say, “It’s not about the technology?” Amen!)
I love the variety of interpretation available for each artwork, and the fact that there are not just ’stops’ or soundbites, but also some longer ’soundtracks’ that I can imagine listening to as I browse the galleries without having to stop for long in front of any particular work (great for those of us with ADD): poetry from Ovid, original music and films composed in response to exhibits by local high school and university students… LOVE LOVE LOVE the film response to Apollo and Diana Attacking the Children of Niobe by kids from the Booker T. Washington HS for the Performing and Visual Arts – “Art educates the soul” indeed!
What a fun and joyous way to celebrate the exhibitions and collection! And it doesn’t hurt that the Museum’s multimedia producer is not only a celebrated photographer & videographer, but also has such a nice voice for audio recorded in-house!
The Dallas Museum of Art is fortunate to have such a talented person leading the development of their multimedia.
Thank you for making the tour so simple to use and so accessible. I think your decision to focus first on the web app is absolutely correct. I’m fascinated by the take-up you saw by visitors using their own smartphones – can’t wait to see how those stats play out, between % using their own devices vs borrowing one from the museum.
I look forward to enjoying all the tours. Keep ‘em coming! It’s great colleagues like you, Chris & the folks at the IMA that make it so much fun to work in this space (and though I absolutely do not live up to your encomium, you sure do help me keep up with what’s going on through your generous sharing of info, best practice and reflections).
All the best, Nancy
Nancy – thanks for your gracious reply!
I’ll do a content post later… but you mentioned the soundscapes and student response videos -
Those were done last summer as part of the prototype tour. We have had a ton of press and an enormously positive response with those. I have to admit that they might be one of my favorite things on the tour. That was all imagined and coordinated by our Education department – specifically the talented and awesome Nicole Stutzman who coordinates our partnership programs.
For everything that’s great about how they feel in the galleries while you’re taking the tour – they have an equal effect on the production side in that they are entirely done by the students and artists. I simply optimize them for the phones and get them into the tour. So not only are they 1) awesome but 2) they make my life easy.
More to come…
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Ted — Congratulations on the launch. It looks very exciting, and I’m looking forward to learning from your experience. Quick question… Any idea why I’d be getting an “invalid customer hash” message whenever I try to play the audio segments in your tours on my Motorola Droid? I thought you’d want to know.
Ted, I’d love to hear more about the process for working with the HS and University students on your tour. I know SFMOMA includes some great poetry and other written word responses to their collection from middle school students in their podcasts, and they too are wonderful. This is an interesting way to produce user-generated content: it’s not produced by the museum or its contractors, but is much more controlled than perhaps what we think of as UGC in the first instance. I’m thinking about how this fits into a museum’s overall content mix & strategy. We’re doing a tweet-up on mobile organized by the Holocaust Museum on March 22 and this could be an interesting point to bring to the conversation, along with playing samples of your tour!
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[...] recent blog post from Ted Forbes at Dallas Museum of Art highlighted this, his museum chose to create a [...]
Ted,
Just read this – phenomenal job! I agree; seeing the visitors download and interact with the tours and such makes it all worth it – there’s just no comparison to that. We launched a similar (app based) initiative in Philadelphia over the last 2 months, in partnership with the Mutter Museum, the ICA and the Penn Museum, and the response has been so encouraging – check out the app in the iPhone AppStore (Search for “exhibit”). Would love to hear what you think!
[...] recent blog post from Ted Forbes at Dallas Museum of Art highlighted this, his museum chose to create [...]
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