I made a point of trying out different museum smartphone apps during my US trip this July-August, and I’ll post some general comments and reviews of my experience using them over the next few weeks, in no particular order.
But first, a big golden rule for museum apps: No wifi, no point. OK slight hyperbole there – but it’s essential for international tourists and a huge convenience for everyone else. I had mobile data well and truly disabled to avoid any nasty roaming charges upon my return. If there wasn’t reliable wifi to enable me to download and use the app easily, I wasn’t going to use it. Even locals may have concerns about exceeding their data limits, and I’m starting to think that free wifi is becoming one of those facilities that people will increasingly expect.
Barnes Collection, Philadelphia
The great thing about this free app is that it duplicated content that was in the audio guide (pre-loaded on an ipod touch that you could hire for $5). And an audioguide was essential as there was no other labelling besides printed catalogues in each room which just listed the titles and artist. (And these didn’t exactly advertise their presence as the picture below attests. But I digress . . . )
Artworks at the Barnes are displayed as ‘ensembles’ – groupings of works that Barnes had used as a pedagogical tool, with juxtapositions intended to show similarities or contrasts in colour, line, form, etc.
There was also interpretation of individual works, colour coded by room to aid orientation.
The app also featured maps to aid orientation and there was a tailored tour for families.
The app was intuitive to use and had a good level of detail, although I didn’t always listen to the audio descriptions to the end (not that they’re overly long at about 1-2 minutes, but I was just trying to get a flavour and hadn’t planned to spend more than a couple of hours or so at the museum). There was nothing that was really innovative or remarkable about its features, but this no-gimmicks approach means it did what it said on the box. There is nothing wrong with a functional and straightforward guide app.
The MoMA is more of a combination of a brochure and guide in app form. There is a calendar feature that shows what is on today or on a date of your choosing, which would be more useful for locals than one-off visitors like me.
The MoMA app is also offered in an impressive range of languages:
The MoMA app had many more features than I had the time, need or inclination to use during my visit (including podcasts and links to YouTube and further iTunes content). To be honest I can’t recall how much I used this app during my visit (months on it’s all a bit of a blur) compared to the standard paper guide map – I suspect not much but just because I was pretty museumed out by this stage of my trip.
To “no wi-fi, no point” I would add “no phone/tablet? – loser!”, which also hints this approach is a cop-out from doing thoughtful, inclusive interpretation-for-all in art shows; and “out of date = crap” – i.e. don’t forget it’s a lot of staff time and work to do it consistently and well.
Good point – and you’ve revealed a slight sin of omission on my part in not critiquing the underlying assumptions behind the creation of an app in the first place. Are museums developing apps because they want to keep up with the Joneses, or are they meeting true visitor needs? And what about people without smartphones – are we creating two classes of visitor, the apps and app-nots?
Part of why I haven’t gone into these issues in this particular review is that with these two apps, they were essentially virtual guides and duplicating content that for the most part was available in other media (the paid-for audioguide at Barnes and the hard copy MoMA guides available in multiple languages). The purpose of the app was reasonably self-evident.
This is not necessarily the case for some of the other apps I tried, and will review soon. Stay tuned . . .