Montreal Museums App: A Platform for a City Based Cultural Experience

GREAT START TO A CITY-BASED CULTURAL EXPERIENCE
The Montreal Museums app is the first iPhone app I’ve seen that realises an idea we had a couple of years ago at my last company – to offer a comprehensive city-based destination for cultural tourists to learn about, plan and interact with cultural sites, to offer mobile tours, interactive applications and rich media experiences at those destinations, and to connect enthusiasts through social media.

And so despite its limitations, I adore this app because it brings together Montreal’s cultural institutions in an app that could serve as a base platform for oh, so much more. Its designed to be a marketing tool for Montreal Museums, according to the producers, BMMD, but it could serve as the foundation for deeper user experiences at museums and significantly more engagement.

WHAT IT DOES SO NICELY…
The app offers a broad overview of the 35 museums that are part of the organization (BMMD), general information (like address, open hours, email etc), special exhibition information and some images of works in the collections or exhibitions and accompanying information, albeit basic.

You can also email images and update Facebook from the “Works” sections. That was cool. Nice, small images of artworks I like that I can share with friends.

And there’s a “What’s hot” menu that tells you what is hot. Although they might have offered something hotter than the launch of their own app…..

“On display>” was a bit of a mystery to me because it offered only single images, out of context, with scant information about the works. It seemed like a “shuffle” function for all the images in the application, which could be cool if you could really dive into those images, learn more about them outside of label text, get some perspective, see them in context, situ, etc.

And then there’s a “Walks” tab which is super cool. The maps open up the Safari browser for line drawn walking tours that include city museums. It would be great if they were more functional and interactive, offered way-point information and point of interest info. But still, a really nice to have and a great skeleton for future add ons.

 

 

 

AND WHERE IT COULD EXPAND…
So now we have the app that consolidates all of Montreal’s museums, it would be great to have in-app purchases or downloads of mobile museum tours so that when I’m visiting a site, I can really get involved and engage.

The “Walks” section could offer audio or multimedia tours to get me from site to site, to engage me in the neighborhoods and streets. The info pages and exhibit pages could link me to ticket purchases/bookings – so that my cultural visit is seamless and the app developer could make a commission on that ticket sale. And a small point – I think you have to link me to twitter as well as facebook – cos social peeps like to tweet.

But in the end I’m really sold on this app – mostly for its potential to become a real city focused cultural exploration tool. I hope the BMMD will consider adding more functionality and content to this great and simple app.

City Walks: Building a Cool Plan with a Good App

TESTING NILEGUIDE, KUKUNU & TRIPLINE FOR A VISIT TO LONDON

LONDON: Last month I spent a week in London with my brother and his wife. They live in Australia and I live in the US. But as a former London resident, I was the designated “Tour Guide” and wanted to plan a couple of city walks from which we could choose, depending on how we felt on any given day.

Club Row - Club Roa

Since we were planning our travels remotely, I wanted to use an online tool that allowed me to create day or half day trips, save them, download them to my iPhone, print them out even, and share and collaborate with my brother.

I tried Tripline, Kukunu and Nileguide.

Tripline Wins
For this purpose, Tripline was the clear winner. I was creating city walks I wanted to share, with a ton of way points and notes, images and questions.  Matthew and I were able to go back and forth about what we should do through the comments field once I “invited” him on a tour.

Tripline only gives you as-the -crow-flies mapping, which was OK since I know the city but i would have preferred walking maps and tube stops/interchanges.

Kukunu and Nileguide are more Robust
Kukunu and Nileguide were better for sharing air travel, transit and hotel information.
With Nileguide, I could create an entire “trip” with all the logistics and additional information about our destinations thrown in. And once you’ve downloaded Nileguide’s App, you can add whatever trips you want and have them there on your phone. But you seem to have to save your day trips to a specific day – and we wanted more flexibility than that. In London, you don’t know if its going to rain or if you’re going to wake up at 1pm after an accidental night goin’ crazy. Nileguide lets you print out trips too (just like Tripline) but with more detail.

With Kukunu there was easier collaboration than with Nileguide or Tripline but fewer offline (meaning non-web) functionalities. My brother could go into our schedule and plans and make changes, whereas with NileGuide and Tripline, I had to read his comments and make changes manually.

But at the end of the day, Tripline gave us most of what we were looking for in planning our London walks. We veered off course plenty of times but we had the basic skeleton of our tours right there on my iPhone, and plenty of options to choose from each morning. We dug that.

The Art Institute of Chicago: French Impressionism App

A PRETTY NICE CATALOG WITH SOME PRETTY INTERESTING INFO ABOUT SOME PRETTY NICE PAINTINGS

I downloaded French Impressionism from the AIC to take with me to my (un-connected) cabin in Tahoe this weekend and I enjoyed leafing through it, reading, learning and zooming in on paintings while I sat on the deck.

I’d chosen the iPad app and 2x’d it to make it iPad ready (tho it didn’t seem like there were any features custom built for iPad).

This is a new format for museum apps. Its broader in scope, more comprehensive and more info-rich than the Louvre app I looked at earlier in the year. It doesn’t look like a marketing piece at all.  But its not a mobile guide, and nor does it try to be.  It presents itself as a digital catalog on the home screen, and that’s important because it sets expectations well.

This is an iPhone/iPad app that gives you a digital version of the museum’s book The Age of French Impressionism, with some limited additional video content and the ability to tweet or FB from any object.

Getting to Content is Easy
The app is easy to navigate.  You choose from a menu of key items on the home page to drill deeper into content areas like Impressionism and Chicago, a Timeline of Impressionism in Chicago or a list of artists. Each sub-menu offers additional choices and content – some fairly limited and some comprehensive.

Arriving at your destination, you’re offered a lot of text (its a book for chrissakes) and icons indicating video, slide shows and social media opps. There aren’t a lot of videos or slide shows though, its mostly just reading. Which isn’t a bad thing considering this is a book after all.

But the Content Experience is a Bit Lame
The content functions well in random access mode, ie. you don’t have to follow a path to participate in a story and there doesn’t appear to be any threading of a tale here. Each video or text entry is stand alone, it functions fine on its own.

Its a bit of a shame therefore that the content is pretty dull, and doesn’t give you some of the information you might like to know. Video commentary is pretty conservative, one directional and un-inspiring. And Douglas Druik, a great curator and dynamic speaker isn’t often identified in video. Just a simple text line would suffice. He’s so engaging but when you don’t know who the speaker is, you tend to wonder a bit more about what he’s saying. Like, who is this guy and what authority does he have to say this?

The Interface is Getting Better
The UI is an improvement on earlier Toura apps, with larger font text (or maybe that was just the iPad 2x – ing), easier back, done, play and communicate features.

Voyages to nowhere have been eliminated and menu options seem simpler.

And its Pretty Nice overall…
Overall, there’s a really nice digital book here, with higher res images than I have seen in any museum app other than the National Gallery/Antenna Audio’s Love Art. And the Museum is giving us access to its Impressionist collection in a great way for remote visitors, or visitors who want to know more. And that’s pretty nice.

In Praise of the Humble Audio Guide

With every museum, gallery and cultural site on the planet falling over itself to introduce a smartphone app, the traditional audio tour has come to signify a kind of luddite-ism or living in the past.

But audio tours, which have been developed and refined over decades of user testing, feedback and innovation, remain the most effective way for museums to educate, inspire and entertain their visitors about their collections and/or special exhibitions with a mobile guide .

In his NYTimes Critic’s Notebook article on October 1st, Edward Rothstein singles out the problem:

“The MoMA app, for example…does not do much more than its audio-guide system. It lets you find objects by floor, gallery or exhibition. But only a few objects get close attention — primarily the ones already singled out for the museum’s audio tour. You can’t navigate well around the galleries because the app does not register your location…And the preset tours, like the one I sampled of the Matisse exhibition, are far more distracting with the iPhone than with the museum’s more straightforward audio-tour equipment.

Moreover, apart from the audio itself, information is slight and availability inconsistent. Search for works by Warhol: some have almost no commentary; others offer excerpts from a book; others link to audio commentary. The app never got easier to use; it remained fussy and interfering. It was a relief to turn it off.”

In 10 years in the audio tour business, I never once heard a visitor or a reviewer say that it was a relief to turn it off.  In fact, I never heard anyone say it was anything other than a positive or neutral experience. That’s the way it should be, right?

So why haven’t museum apps delivered the kind of meaningful experiences that their precursors did, and still do? It seems to be a combination of things:

1.     the internal museum teams responsible for museum apps tend to be more tech/feature focused than content/experience focused
2.     museum teams responsible for apps have not adopted the concept that content and the content/in-museum experience is primary, and
3.     too many museum professionals are looking for their 15 minutes of fame

What’s so bad about being “clunky” and “outdated” if visitors dig it?
Read any review of a museum app and you’ll find these adjectives leveled at audio guides: clunky, outdated, outmoded, analog, first generation, “going the way of the dinosaur” (that’s probably not an adjective…), old school, pre-recorded, un-connected, disconnected…

It seems unfashionable to even consider an audio guide these days, which is a great shame for museum-goers since longstanding market leaders like Antenna Audio and ESPRO/Acoustiguide continue to churn out entertaining, inspirational content that connects visitors to the things they find interesting in the simplest and most meaningful ways. So what if its not delivered on the trendiest device? If visitors love it then shouldn’t we keep giving it to them?

The few museums and cultural sites that are creating terrific content experiences in their apps without these market brands are typically doing it with ex-employee consultants of these brands, such as SFMOMA and Earprint (although @PeterSamis is really in a league of his own), and a number of London museums with Simply Green+Webb. London-based start-up Imagineear, founded by ex-Antennas Andrew Nugee and Ziv Kushnir, and the incredible content producer Eleonore Heijbore are iterating new business models with traditional audio. And ex-Antenna, @NancyProctor, is a thought leader in the space and heads up the Smithsonian’s mobile initiatives. These clunky, outdated audio guide folks know what they’re doing. And they keep doing it well.

But the traditional audio tour companies have failed to introduce the kind of sexy, newsworthy, digital-native kind of solutions that museums want, which seems to be why they’re faring so poorly in comparison to shops like Toura, Spotlight Mobile, NOUS and others, at least in the press.

“I’d like to have the hottest thing in Christendom, thanks”
Ten, or even five years ago, the museum peeps who were responsible for mobile interpretation were mostly educators. Sometimes the museum director was directly involved and sometimes the curators were involved. Well, curators were always involved but not always directly. Today, web teams, tech teams, interactive learning teams, IT teams and marketing teams seem to be leading the drive.

That’s cool for bringing in new ideas and technical knowledge to reach new audiences and expand the educational mission…. But it seems to have created a prevailing interest in that which is technically sexy and a prevailing disinterest in that which has been done before. Apps are being introduced with little or no real content, and which serve to demonstrate that the museum is hip and trendy but offer very little else to those museumgoers who want deeper insights and learning experiences.

Some museums have some very hot things – foursquare checkins with discounts, mapping and locationing, social media updates, “likes” and so on. But none of them have really changed the language yet. None has delivered a seachange in musueum interpretation. And none so far, other than perhaps SFMOMA and MoMA (notwithstanding Ed Rothstein’s review) have delivered an enhancement to the ‘clunky’, ‘outdated’ audio tour experience.

Content reigns over features
Its pretty cool that I can tweet, FB, digg and other stuff from a museum app – let my friends know what I’m doing and what I like. Its really cool that I can see where I am on a map and get good instructions about going to the next place.

But honestly, does it really enhance my museum visit that much? What really enhances my museum visit is that I can easily access content about the objects  I’m interested in, or find the kinds of things I’d like. Even if I’m used to being dragged around by an audio guide/tour or if I’m part of the “me” generation, I still want to know something about what I’m looking at right now. Cos that’s why I came here. To learn something, to be inspired, to find a deeper connection or meaning in something. I’m interested in what I’m doing, not what is happening.

So yes, I’d like a bit more content. And museum apps are short on that. The audio guide for any museum gives you a ton of content and a ton of random access choices, so what I listen to is all up to me. Even if I have to press a number to get that content. At least I’ll know its relevant to what I’m looking at.

“I want to get the press that the Design Museum got”
Six months ago, a NY museum director told me that she wanted the kind of press that the Design Museum got for its app. She didn’t know what she wanted in her museum app, she hadn’t used the Design Museum’s app (which was not ou la la, the greatest) but she wanted the press.

It feels like too many museum professionals want the PR that comes with a smartphone app, and too few have really thought through what they want to offer their visitors through that kind of app. Audio guides are boring. Noone will write a story about a new audio tour, especially if its not also available on iPhone and Android. But that doesn’t change a single thing about the visitor experience. And I hope that’s what museums care most about.

So give a shout out and an #FF to the humble audio tour…
At the end of the day, its about what I feel, see and learn when its me and the artwork face to face. If I have to spend more time fiddling with an app than looking at the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, then something is wrong.  And if I’m reading on a tiny screen more than I’m looking at what I came to look at? well, that ain’t right either.

And thats what’s so nice about audio guides. For the most part, when they do it well, the people who make them and the museum folks who are responsible for them know that. They construct tours that allow me to explore, they give me insights, they let me hear from the most interesting sources. They make my museum experience better, they don’t complicate it or make it super-trendy but empty. They’re where I’m at. They focus on content. They focus on my experience. And that’s why I still like audio guides 9 times out of 10 over today’s smartphone apps. Even if it makes me look like I’m behind the times.

San Francisco Guide – mTrip

NOT QUITE READY FOR PRIME TIME, TRYING TO DO TOO MUCH? OR BOTH?

Hmm, where to begin? Today I read a lot of news reports about mTrip’s travel guides, which I understand were updated with AR enhancements.  One reviewer who said he used the app in New York seemed to really dig it, especially the AR functionality. After reading that, I was so much looking forward to using the app for our City by the Bay.

For $5.99 it offers a pretty big promise:

“The ONLY travel guide with automated and personalized trip planning, quality content, off-line navigation, augmented reality and trip sharing”.

Well, unfortunately the entirety of that promise isn’t quite realised in the app, even thought they do a lot of things really well. Here’s why:

User Interface
The UI is bit of a mess. They’re trying, you can see they’re trying, they do a lot of things reasonably well – set travel dates, accommodation mapping, tour building. But beyond that, inconsistent task bar icons are confusing. I learned over time what was available in certain screens but I feel like it should be simpler. Compare these two screens below…not a lot of consistency in the layout and functions. Look especially at the lower task bar and the upper nav icons – the kind of inconsistency you just don’t see in a really polished app:

And I have to admit, I got lost over and over again inside the app, trying to set up an itinerary, reviewing places – who gives the ratings btw? its not clear where those 4 stars come from: trusted, branded travel guide source? yelp-like/people like me/man on the street sources,? mtrip users? (the stars don’t ever work if you don’t know who is giving the stars), and searching for itineraries.

What I was really digging…
I was able to do a couple of things really easily. Name my trip, identify the dates, set my accommodation (even adding a “home stay” that wasn’t listed in search results).  I could create itineraries by day and compare my choices over the week to see if there was a better route or itinerary. I could base travel choices on those things that were near to where I’m staying or near to where I am. It was all very dynamic and logical. The tools were the right kind of tools that a traveler would want, but the intelligence wasn’t there .

mTrip Genius does not have a 160 IQ
The promise here is ace. I’d love an app that recommended me a daily itineray based on my interests, albeit broad, not too specific, just what I’m generally into. Well, this app won’t get into Mensa, I’m afraid. I tried mTrip Genius, a recommendation engine, several times. On the first try I selected:

– museums +++, monuments+, parks+, religious 0, alternative choices, medium visit intensity

Results: Cable Car Museum, Musee Mecanique, SFMOMA. (?)

In this algorithm does “alternative” match with “no-one would ever visit this place”?  and i mean, what, in any of the previous information I input, suggested that I would be remotely interested in the cable car museum or musee mecanique as my top 2 of 3 choices?

Take two: I went back to edit mTrip Genius and entered:
– museums+++, monuments 0, parks 0, religious 0, top attractions, high intensity

Results: Exploratorium, Legion of Honor, Zeum (double ?)

SFMOMA and the de Young don’t rate a mention in any museum-focused, top-attraction oriented visitor in San Francisco? Can’t be right?

This mTrip Genius needs a lot of work. I don’t know if its coding, modifying, data integration from external sources like a yelp, tripadvisor, nileguide or lonely planet type site, or what. But really, Zeum? How can the app recommend Zeum over SFMOMA or the de Young for a museum loving, high intensity visitor looking for “top attractions” with 4 days in the city? mTrip Genius is no genius.

Overall, its a not very smart app with a super smart premise
There are some really neat pieces to this app that maybe I haven’t highlighted enough. Settings puts you in situ, the maps are reasonably reliable, you can chart an itinerary from here. I didn’t use the AR functionality yet which I gather from all reports is killer, maybe THE killer. I’ll do that next!

The content seems spot on when you get to the right content but the logic that gets you there needs work. And the interface needs a ton of work, a ton – so many options, and so bloody confusing that I can’t buy into it wholeheartedly yet.  I want to like and adore it, if the app did everything it promised I think I would. But for today, there’s so much work for the mTrip developers and designers to get this app into prime time.

National Galleries of Scotland: Impressionist Gardens

A SURPRISINGLY LOVELY APP – PROOF THAT YOU DON’T NEED TO BE AN EXPERT TO PRODUCE AN EXPERT APP

I was really excited to learn about the National Galleries of Scotland’s iPhone app for the “Impressionist Gardens” show, on view 31 July to 17 October, 2010. Not because I particularly like Impressionist art or want to know more about French landscape painting, but because I’ve had a soft spot for the Museum since the lovely James Robertson took me there for a Manet exhibition in 2003  (oh, what a night).

But I was also a bit anxious about what I would find. I’m not sure why, possibly (probably) American arrogance and our unjustified sense that few people outside San Francisco, New York and London can produce anything worthy of note in this mobile world. Whilst I was rooting for something cool, I didn’t expect much from an app by a Scottish museum, designed by a Scottish digital team (Not that there’s anything wrong with Scotland, just that we Americans can be pretty high on ourselves).

But that was a wrong assumption. This is a delightful app, which is well  designed from a user perspective and has a ton of interesting and educational content. The audio interpretation is a bit lackluster but the app design and overall experience were satiating for an armchair visitor like me – going to  Edinburgh from my living room in SF.

What’s cool and not so cool?

Let’s start with the home page and navigation. All very intuitive, all very simple. I get how to use it in a split second. I get to the content I’m interested in with one, two or three taps. There’s no ambiguity here, no voyages to nowhere. What you see is what you get (there’s an acronym for that, no?) Nice work!

“The Show” is a text overview of (amazingly) the show, with a nice video intro from some lovely gentlemen with lovely Scottish accents to whom we are latterly introduced (squarely in the “What isn’t so cool?” camp) but which outlines the curatorial perspective on the exhibition in a comprehensive, academic and sometimes engaging way with video footage and context-enhancing images. And I mean, how can you resist a Scotsman saying “exotic succulents”?

If I were IN the museum, I might find these 3 minutes and 26 seconds a bit long while I’m raring to get exploring, but at home across our proverbial pond and then some, I was relaxed and got into it.

“Share” opens up a pre-scripted email that’s a little bit lame but which you can edit, so no harm done.  No tweeting or FB-ing from this app so far as I can see. Seems like a missing gimme.

“Visitor Info” has your bog standard visitor info with a link to the National Galleries’ ticketing website, which opens a web browser. Go back to the app and you’re back at the start. Not great but workable.

Under “Art” you’ve got three choices: List (a text list of artworks in the exhibition with text, audio or video interpretation) and Media (an image driven list of works with simple icons indicating either audio or video for a particular artwork).

I thought maybe one menu would be enough. Perhaps titled “list” with images and their accompanying media icons. Two choices seemed redundant when the resulting content is exactly the same – catering to different types of user? maybe.

And then there’s “Map”, which either I didn’t get at all, or is ephemera in an otherwise tightly designed app. Its not a map of the museum, that’s for sure.

I can’t really comment on “Guide” since I was not in the museum using the keypad, but it was great to see a keypad and the results screens worked well. There is text and sometimes audio or video for a reasonable number of works and I can see that this interface (although a bit awkward to look at) could be exactly the right thing to have on hand on-site.

“Events” is a bit of a hodge-podge listing of everything going on under the sun. Perhaps categories like exhibitions, lectures, films etc would be more effective in helping us sort through the available options.

Content in Ecru
The interpretive content in this app was a bit stolid. I liked the multiple voices, although I was never properly introduced to the narrators. I liked the sound design, particularly the invocation of the outdoors: buzzing and alive. And from an amateur’s perspective, it appeared authoritative, intimate and offered-up by real people with real opinions. But who are they? and could they perhaps talk a little bit more to each other and opine a little bit less? The overall tone seemed a bit old school and tell-em-like-it-is-ish rather than the more conversational and collaborative sharing-ness we’ve come to expect in the past, oh, 18 months.

A terrific exhibition for the non-visitor
But overall, the app delights. How often can you get this close to an exhibition, this easily, from 10,000 miles away? I feel like I’ve been to Impressionist Gardens, toured the exhibition and got to that point of ‘yeah, I’ve seen enough, where’s the cafe’? Not necessarily what the Museum was hoping for in launching this app, even if they didn’t expect their biggest fans to be people who never visited.

MoMA: the Museum of Modern Art iPhone app

BEST IN CLASS – A MULTIPURPOSE APP THAT MOSTLY HITS

I’ve spent hours and hours over the past four days happily getting lost inside MoMA’s fantastic iPhone/iPod Touch app, which was launched on August 12^th in the iTunes store.

This app delivers against a wide range of potential user needs and interests: the basics (opening hours, exhibitions, what’s on view, film series, lectures, and the more mundane, like ticketing and floorplans), a deeper dive into artists and artworks in the collection, a mobile tour guide with multiple offerings, and a patchwork of utilities for media creation, sharing and playback.

It’s the first museum app I’ve used that covers this range of functionality to this level of completeness, competence and depth. In fact, it covers so much that I was at times a bit confused about where to go to find what I was looking for. I was also a bit disappointed with the mobile tours section – not just with the interface design but also with the content itself. But aside from that, the application is a winner – it does so much, so well.

What works and what needs work…
Its clear that a lot of thought has gone into this app, which organizes content and functionality into three main areas: Calendar, Tours, and Art. Two additional icons, Info and More, provide more than just info and more but seem like the right titles for those sections, give or take.

Calendar: What will be happening when and where?
Under “Calendar” (the page to which the application loads on opening) users can select from a menu of options for which dates are important: e.g. Today at MoMA, Pick a Day, Exhibitions, Film Schedule etc. Over the four days I used the app the information was current. The database feed worked well or at least, the data was up to date (not necessarily a gimme in most large institutions). Today for example, a Tuesday, the Museum is closed and it told me so and kindly offered me the red exclamation mark (ou la la-!) just to make sure I got it. I appreciated that. And I wasn’t offered shows that were over or upcoming in the exhibitions section – just what was on, and when. Seems like an obvious thing to get right but museums have sometimes struggled with this kind of real time information.

I also liked the addition of PS1 exhibitions and programs in the app – great to see a back-end connection and cross promotion for the little sister.

Art: Exploring the collection
Under “Art”, you’re offered a menu of genres (formats?) or ‘all’. Click on any these and you get a preloaded list of 10 artworks with icons to the left and titles aside. Once you click on an artwork you get the 411 from what looks like CMS data and sometimes a blurb of text relating to the exhibition, period, genre or medium into which the artwork is catalogued. It would be cool if you could access the interpretive content for the artwork from here.

‘Load more’ appears at the bottom of the list and yes, you can load more, seemingly ad infinitum (or at least until I tired of ‘adding more’ at around 100 artworks).  So lots of access to lots of artworks for the enthusiast and/or browser, even if I can’t find a “search” and this listing seems to be auto-generated (not in itself a bad thing – opening me up to new discoveries).

Art and Artists also has drill down menus of artists and art history terms – pretty cumbersome even though the results eventually get you somewhere after 2,3,4,5, taps.

Tours: Going deeper, getting connected
Here’s where the experience starts to struggle in the way the interface has been developed and the tours designed. Open “Tours” and you’re offered a list tours; Browse by Floor (somewhat logical), Select Audio by Number (totally logical, although I’d prefer a custom keypad to the native keyboard). And following that, five menu items that seem to be based more on the way MoMA looks at its inventory of audio interpretation assets rather than the way a visitor would visit and explore the Museum. What is Modern Voices? What is Modern Kids (for Kids?) What is MoMA Teen Audio (for teens, by teens?). If you spend the time to listen to each one, you begin to understand where they’re pitched and what they cover but at the outset, the categories confuse.

The tours are also slightly disappointing in that they don’t offer a consistent, cohesive or contained experience. Click on any artwork and you might find one, two or no audio messages in association with an artwork – that can disappoint when you’re in the thick of a tour.

The content is partly cool and partly dull. On the one hand, you’ve got Kara Walker’s first person telling of “race, slavery and the sado-masochistic construct” as you’re introduced to her work in Modern Voices, where let’s face it, we get straight down to brass tacks and it glows. And then you’ve got MoMA’s Director Glenn Lowry’s linen opening as the narrative voice for the Modern Voices tour – I’m not saying its Mr Lowry per se, just that the script they made him read doesn’t set off rockets. I’m sure at dinner he’s as vibrant and engaging as the rest of us.

“Info” and “More”: Going even deeper, getting more connected – sort of….
“Info” has a lot of “Info” for sure, but considering its so neatly organized hopefully most people find what they’re looking for under this heading. People want “Info” and this app gives it to them, simply, clearly and in spades.

“More” is a bit of a dog’s breakfast. Perhaps it would have been better titled “Stuff We Wanted To Do But Couldn’t Find Another Place For” (which is more or less what More always is anyway). There are utilities like:
a) MoMASnap – take a pic in the Museum and it has a Museum banner, and you can mail it as a postcard;
b) MoMA Tracks – not exactly MoMA tracks but rather, a way to play songs from your iPod tracklist whilst visiting MoMA (I believe there are people out there who would really dig that).

But I’m not convinced the links to the iTunes U site or MoMA podcasts are necessarily valuable here. Possibly the social media integrations work, so long as people come to understand that they can tweet and FB from “More” if they’re in a Museum app. Those functionalities seem better placed within the app itself. Don’t we all love to share when we’re experiencing something cool? At least, that’s the idea.

and finally….Where’s the search?
I couldn’t find a search bar, which seemed strange considering MoMA’s deep experience in this field (we love to search by artist!), the way the web and mobile work (google anyone?), and the fact that several reviewers of this app pointed to the ability to access a “vast” database of art, artworks and art history terminology – which I took to mean that you could do so by term search, not just by drill down. If anyone out there found the search button please let me know.

All the same, best in class
This app excels in its scope and the level to which it delivers against a seemingly broad agenda to inform and inspire off-site enthusiasts as well as to inform, educate, communicate with, and engage visitors. There is no other museum app I’ve used that so thoroughly, cleverly and cleanly accomplishes so many goals – and the variety of potential users seem top of mind for the most part in the design and execution of the app.

Give us search (did I really not find that? Is it really not there), give us more content and more engaging content that is better organized and more consistent with an on-site tour experience. Otherwise, MoMA has developed a terrific multipurpose app for a wide range of audiences and purposes that is better than any I’ve seen.

Update: 17 August, 12.00pm: Yes, there is in fact a search located in the menu under Art. According to Allegra Burnett’s comment on this post, the team is looking at making the search more visible in future iterations.

Hirshhorn Museum: Yves Klein, With the Void, Full Power

SOME (VERY) WELL HIDDEN GEMS, LOCATED AFTER SOME (VERY) SERIOUS MINING

The Hirshhorn Museum’s iPhone App for Yves Klein, With the Void, Full Power was launched in mid-June to considerable fanfare from the mainstream press and museum twitterati, with pronouncements like “cutting edge” and “groundbreaking”. There was a lot of tweeting and retweeting about the availability of a Smithsonian iPhone app, but not much critical focus on what it delivers to visitors and enthusiasts.

While this app (powered by Toura) provides a good overview of the exhibition and some terrific insights from Yves Klein and the Exhibition’s curator, Kerry Brougher, those insights were quite hard to find. Something about the UI, app structure and style-sheets was exhausting; screen after screen of small font text to finally arrive (maybe) at the nugget I’m seeking just didn’t gel with the promise of this groundbreaking museum app.

What is cool?

Artist’s archival audio and video
There’s a lot of archival video content from Yves Klein. What a happy circumstance that he was an avid documenter of his method, perspective, thoughts and feelings. Deeply embedded within each theme menu and object menu, users can find original recordings of Klein’s thoughts on his own works, his production process, and their meaning to him. Extraordinary that the Smithsonian had access to this archival content and incorporated it in such a useful and meaningful way.  Bravo!

Curator perspectives
Kerry Brougher is an interesting guy and he’s excited when he’s talking about Yves Klein and that’s super cool. He’s got a way of making Klein’s works come alive through his own excitement. Not the world’s greatest ‘voice’, he is nonetheless an insightful, engaging, and interested “off-the-cuff-er”.  And although he’s poorly edited in some parts (statements just drop into an abyss), this guy is for real. Authentic. He gives us those aha moments and take-away nuggets that we all want to dine out on.

What is not so cool?

What’s with all the text?
Nobody but nobody wants to read screen after screen of (largely) static, text-based content on an iPhone. I can read text online, at the Museum and in the Exhibition catalogue – I don’t need to do it on a tiny screen. Eliminating the longer text portions of the app and replacing them with audio or audio/slide show “intros” would be a big improvement to the user experience.

Drill baby, drill
I’m tapping on endless menu list options, going deeper and deeper, and I’m thinking about Alaskan oil exploration. I’d love to see a simple, one-step way to get to the content that I really care about. Perhaps a keypad with stop numbers for the in-museum experience (basic but fairly fool-proof), or an object list with icons attached for the off-site experience. The search function was hit and miss. When I typed “Yves” and “Klein” I got no results. When I typed “pink” I got a list of relevant results.

More help with maps and locationing
The Map icon yielded little value. While I could see the maps and icons that showed something was available, I was unable to access content through this route. It might be cool to plot the objects that have associated content onto this map. Even if I can’t see “You Are Here”, it would be great to see the content that is available for specific artworks throughout the Museum. It might encourage me to explore an area I hadn’t visited.

A missed opportunity?
I often review a museum tour or app, especially its content, and come to the conclusion that something is better than nothing.  But in this case, the app seems like a missed opportunity. On the one hand you’ve got great artist content, a dynamic and engaging curator with fascinating stories to tell, and an institutional inclination to communicate with visitors in a new way. On the other, the app is stymied by seemingly rigid style-sheet layouts, heavy text orientation and a lack of dynamic access to media and content.

Loosen up the interface, drop the text and get us where we want to be faster – then you’ll have a cutting edge and groundbreaking app on your hands.

Acoustiguide Smartour: Asian Art Museum

STAID INTERPRETATION, INTELLIGENT INTERFACE & SOME CLEVER AUDIENCE BUILDING FUNCTIONALITY

Released last week, this free app from the Asian Art Museum offers an enhanced audio tour of the Museum’s permanent collection with several ways to access content, on- or off-site, and social media integration. Although the content itself needs work, the access points to content demonstrate a deep understanding of the way people explore museums.  And perhaps even more interestingly, the producer, Acoustiguide, has incorporated email capture and on-sell opportunities in a clever way – something for all museums and museum app providers to consider.

UI demonstrates experience
Several simple and intuitive ways to access content serve different learning styles and user types. If you’re browsing in the Museum, you select content either through stop numbers on a keypad or maps with stop icons. At home, you can select exhibits from a numbered list with titles and images that describe and illustrate the area of the Museum’s collection you’re accessing.

One gripe: I’ve got an emerging pet peeve with museum apps in general – why two taps to content? I select a piece of content, a screen loads and then I need to press a play icon? Why not just load the content I selected?

Notwithstanding that, the UI design demonstrates a deep understanding of differing audience needs that underscores the value of Acoustiguide’s long history of providing mobile interpretation at museums and cultural sites in developing mobile/downloadable apps. The newbie mistakes are absent – its simple and intuitive, no bells and whistles to get in the way of my experience with the collection and zero text (no one wants to read what they can read in larger font on a website or a wall).

Content is a bit of a yawn…but better than nothing
The content is pretty uninspiring.  If memory serves me, its lifted wholesale from the Museum’s permanent collection audio guide with the addition of static images of the object associated with each audio message for those of us who are using the app outside the Museum, or as a visual confirmation that what I’m looking at is what I’m hearing about.

This content needs some enlivening. It could benefit from a fresher approach, some integration of images and video that serve the interpretive mission. But its not awful, its factually correct as far as I can determine, and it offers deeper insight into the Museum’s art and artifacts…And hey, something is better than nothing, right? Especially considering the lack of familiarity many of us have with Asian art, its themes and iconography.

Social media integration works – where will it lead?
Its simple and it works. I can FB, email or tweet from any object within the app after entering my username and password from any of these services. Auto-generated text says I’m exploring the Asian Art Museum but I was able to change it to my own choice of text. We’ll see if I get any feedback or response from the Museum, whether and how they leverage this capability.

Innovative, audience-building functionalities
The app producer, Acoustiguide, has done some clever and interesting things with this app that other museums and museum app providers should consider:

1.  Getting around the fact that Apple owns the data from anyone who downloads the app through the iTunes App Store, this app requests that you register with an email and password. Its not mandatory to use the app but the way its presented on the home page of the app with a pop up screen suggests that it is. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get content without registering, which annoyed me a bit until I remembered that ‘hey, I’m getting access to the Asian Art Museum collection for free. It’s the least I can do’. In the event, I was able to access the app content without registering but it wasn’t obvious. The Museum articulates reasons to register that are not terribly compelling but still, they do it, they try.  Even if only a small portion of app users register, its great for the Museum, giving them the ability to ping registrants with events, offers and updated information.

2. Acoustiguide markets its apps for other museums within this app directly. I’m not sure how many transactions it drives but it’s a clever idea to incorporate other apps. Who knows? You like this, then maybe you’ll like that. It doesn’t take up much space and opens the door to further transactions. Acoustiguide and its clients can only benefit from this integration, there’s no downside.

An app that’s smarter than its content
The app works – you can’t crash it. Its clever but not ‘smarty-pants’ clever in design and functionality but the content fails, like, seriously fails. I’d like to see a complete re-write of the interpretation, more use of interactive and multimedia formats, more dynamic audio interpretation – something that inspires through engaging storytelling, energy and spark, singular opinion. Something that excites me about this collection, something that energizes me to get on board, visit, donate, become a member. Something, anything.

But there are some real gems here in the way the way the UI design gets you to content in a variety of intuitive ways, and in the way Acoustiguide captures user data and promotes other apps.

Apple App: Musée de Louvre

A GREAT MARKETING PIECE BUT NOTHING MORE

Here’s an app that says, “we-need-an-iPhone-app-so-lets-get-one”. Its unclear whether there is any objective to the application other than this.

The app is light on content, lacks any of the interactive or social media applications that the platform offers (except connection to www.louvre.fr which doesn’t render for the small/mobile screen), could certainly not be used as an in-museum experience (even though it offers static maps) and is not particularly easy or intuitive to navigate. On the plus side, it gives a nice selection of some of the Museum’s most famous works for first time visitors, and is a handy quick-look tool for reviewing some of what the Museum has to offer, how to get there and some of the history of the palace. And if that’s all its designed to be, it succeeds.

I gave it three stars in my iTunes review after a quick look. But now that I’ve gone through the entire app (not without considerable effort to remain engaged), I would downgrade that to a one. The good news is the application works and my understanding is that it was built on a tight time schedule for the launch of the Apple Store in the Louvre. I couldn’t crash it, even with a lot of impatient tapping, pinching, swiping and back button pressing. Bravo on that one.

App Design
After an opening image of the Pyramid, the screen moves to landscape with several categories organized using cover-flow. These are;

1. Bookmarks: where you find your bookmarked artworks and videos (but can’t do anything with them or find more information),
2. Louvre Tour: seven short and poorly edited promotional videos of the museum and its most famous artworks,
3. Artworks: 37 artworks that each offer a sub-navigation menu of text (50-100 words), see detail (a zoom function that doesn’t zoom very deeply into a poor quality image), technical detail, location (a red dot on an incomprehensible map of the museum) and for about seven artworks, video (which is taken from the “Louvre Tour” videos I mentioned above)
4. The Palace:  ten galleries, halls or architecture elements with similar sub-menus as “Artworks”, and
5. Visitor Information: offering a menu of your bog standard visitor information.

Navigation/Interface

The navigation is reasonably simple although a list of five thumbnails might have been an easier learn. And there’s an annoying extra tap to get to what you’re looking for. e.g. tap on “Artworks” and the album cover flips around to….lo, the same image of the Mona Lisa and the title “Artworks”. Tap again and you get the artworks in cover-flow format. Not really necessary and a nuisance since the back button throughout the app takes you only back to the previous screen, thereby doubling up on the redundant screens. There’s no back to main, back to artworks etc, which is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. In fact, it leaves the screen quite clean and simple.

There’s no toggling between portrait and landscape. You watch it the way they want you to. I get that on video and cover-flow but why on sub-menus, text, or images? But really, that’s just nitpicking.

But there’s a big language problem with video. You’ve selected English, you’re seeing all the text in English but every time a video loads, it loads in French and you have to switch to English. Extremely frustrating user experience. This is a glitch that I’m sure (I hope) the application developer will iron out in future iterations.

Content
The content is lamentable. Here’s what I’m talking about…the entire text for the 20 sec video segment for Nike of Samothrace:

“The Victory of Samothrace once stood on a rocky promontory overlooking the waves to commemorate a sea battle. It now stands at the top of a specially built staircase”.

That’s all you can say about La Victoire? There are some rousing Anglican strings in the background though.

The text information is the bulk of the interpretive content which seems like a bit of a bummer on the iPhone platform.  It varies in quality and meaning for each of the artworks. Some is interesting. Some has that “aha moment”, some of it tells you something you didn’t know that you might want to share and/or that inspires your interest to engage further.  But overall its not terribly useful (e.g. “The Seated Scribe is located on the upper floor of the Department of Egyptian Antiquities” – ou la la).

And back to UI/Experience:  the text is pretty small. Its light grey on white, and about 10 pt I’m guessing, squidged into half the landscape screen.  Simply not that enjoyable to read.

“See more detail”, the zoom function, doesn’t really allow you to see all that much more detail. A bit disappointing that the images are so low res and the zoom is so limited. Especially since with artworks it’s often a lot about what you’re seeing.

The Location function is irrelevant. No-one could use this app to do a tour of the Louvre. And do you really care that The Wedding Feast at Cana is located on the first floor of the Denon wing in Room 6 if you’re not there?

Since the Louvre owns the copyright to all the audio content produced for its collection, I was surprised this wasn’t just slotted into the app. There could have been app size considerations. But still, that seems like a simple add that could have improved the app content and experience enormously.

Summary
As an overall experience, this app doesn’t do much more than showcase top artworks and objects, and it is probably not meant to do anything more than that. I would like to have seen a cleaner overview of what the application offers, faster access to what I want and faster escapes from cul de sacs I didn’t want to be in, more interesting and meaningful content and the ability to engage in interactive or social media activities.

But despite everything I’ve said, this is one of the most downloaded museum apps in the iTunes App Store, has a 3.5 star rating from 28,000+ reviewers and so in that sense, its meeting the needs of a lot of people. Who am I to say? It seems to have achieved its goal.