Dartmouth College students testing Mobeum in the Albright Gallery, the Hood Museum of Art, January 19, 2010
A couple of days ago we ran our first pilot test of Open Museum's mobile service,
Mobeum. The test was conducted in the Albright Gallery of the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and focused on the Hood Open Museum European Collection. The test group consisted of nine Dartmouth college undergraduates enrolled in a museum seminar, all of them women, half of them using a smartphone (3 Blackberry, 1 ipod). The results,
shared here, were informative but not surprising. On the whole, participants said
Mobeum had great potential to enrich the visitor experience, but there were issues that needed to be addressed. These issues fell into three categories: intrusiveness of sound, ease of use, and quality of content. They also raised concerns about the penetration rate of smartphones and demographics of smartphone owners.
What many participants liked about Mobeum was the possibility of listening to (as well as, seeing and reading) pertinent information while in the gallery. Most were happy to be liberated from reading labels and interested in having the ability to search additional information at will. The kind of information they wanted to access included related works, other works by the same artist, point and counterpoint discussions by specialists, and gossip about the piece. They wanted this information to be high quality, clear and easily accessible. They wanted these enrichments while preserving the traditional quiet and tranquility of the gallery experience.
The first point, the intrusiveness of audio guides, is a problem but one that is easily addressed. Part of the appeal of visiting a gallery is an environment that sets the stage for what Nina Simon of Museum 2.0
calls rapture, whether the rapture be solitary or shared. Fortunately, there are a number of relatively easy solutions for reducing noise, ranging from instructing people on volume control to handing out headphones. In the short run, Open Museum plans to acquire inexpensive headphones to hand out at test sessions. We know from our local library that it is possible to make headsets available for about $1.50 (the price of the sets they sell at the front desk). There is some research to do on
the which, where and how much of headphone purchase, but my bet is there is an easy and inexpensive way to make headphones available. This option could also work for museums, who could either sell or give away cheap headphones. We are also exploring what would be involved with museums acquiring a dozen or so higher quality, large sets to make available for loan (i.e. purchase cost, hygiene issues, logistics). Even in cash-strapped institutions, this kind of acquisition is probably fundable through an individual or corporate sponsorship, because mobile audio guides are sexy and the relative cost of headsets very low, paving the way to a lot of bang for the donor buck. Although it strikes me as best that museums provide headphones as part of an optimal access policy, it is merely a question of time until every visitor with a smartphone also carries their own. As one student participant pointed out, everyone with an iPod (nearly 100% of students on the Dartmouth campus) already carries a set wherever they go.
Ease of use, which is harder to solve than the problem of sound, can be improved in a number of ways, some of them immediately, some of them over the next three to six months of development. Mobeum (like the mother project, Open Museum) is in public alpha release, which means we will be constantly changing its look, feel, performance and functionality in response to test feedback and according to long-term plans. For example, this week's test participants made it loud and clear that Mobeum needs a "next" button to move from object to object in the gallery. We already knew we needed one but needed to observe how people used the service (to connect, navigate, make choices) and what they considered "next" (i.e. new object or more information about this object). Interestingly, most people seemed to assume that there was a "right" order to view the objects and they were happy to follow in that order when "on the tour."
In response to the test results, we will revise Mobeum and launch a second test next week. Embracing an organic approach to design, (design-development-test-design-development...), we will conduct dozens of iterations of this cycle before full public release in the spring. Simultaneously, working from a long-term plan, we will introduce new features, such as social networking, that will permit visitors to share their experience via social networks and enable the museum to share announcements and capture them as friends.
The third issue raised was content creation -- the key to Mobeum's ultimate success and the area that does not fall entirely within our purview. We're in good stead with our pilot partner, the Hood, because they are in perfect agreement that online content needs to be high quality and the Hood should be intimately involved in its creation. We believe the first step to good content is a good team, one whose collective membership has access to information (i.e. knowledge, images, audio, video) and the skill set to deliver it online. It is not a question of hierarchy, authority, or permission but rather a question of identifying roles, establishing work flow and constantly communicating.
As for the smartphone, sales are projected to grow rapidly and as they grow,
it is predicted that costs will drop, by as much as 1/2 in two years. As people transition to the smartphone, smart features such as the "QR code readers" (bar code scanners) will be automatically built into the device. Already, the camera in Japanese cell phones read these bar codes which are
present all over Japan. An example of how Open Museum is preparing for the future, Mobeum automatically generates QR codes for every object. At this point, it may appear to be a flashy gimmick, but our intent is to test an application that may soon become a standard menu option.
It is always tricky to plan for the future, but our goal is to build Mobeum in such a way that museum partners will be ready to welcome the first gallery visitor with a smartphone who is eager to engage with their collections.