Museum Apps for Navigation and Interfacing

Museums are source of information and knowledge for the visitors. It hosts several art pieces, structures, portraits, artifacts and paintings depicting famous historical figures or real world objects.

Some of the world famous museums are spread across several miles, like The British Museum of London that houses more than 8 million art pieces plus works or the renowned Art Institute of Chicago that exhibits the permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works covering nearly 26,000 sq.ft.

Challenges for Museums today

Museum Navigation and Exhibit Study – Current Operating Method
Museums with large area pose a big challenge for the visitors to navigate within the region. The signboards and directions available are not enough to guide and navigate the visitor.

Also, with technological advancements, it is important for curators of these museums to adopt the new techniques. This will help them regain footfall by enhancing interests of visitors.

Limiting Factor

Despite signboards and navigation maps in place, most visitors often happen to miss out certain sections of the museum. Also, there are limited number of audio guides to cater the requirement of surging visitors during weekends and holidays.

Technological Assistance Through Smart Apps

Today with increasing number of smartphone apps in use, museum experience is expected to revolutionise museum connectivity. Not only it allows more people to connect with the museum through their mobile devices, but there is also the potential for them to personalise their museum experience whenever and wherever they like.

Many people in museums feel mobile is the perfect solution to providing visitors with access to information without cluttering up space with lots of signs. Museum apps form part of made-for-museum audio devices on-site or are accessed through visitors’ personal phones and media players.

Benefits of Using Smart Museum Apps

Smart Apps based museum navigation benefit visitors in several ways.

• It helps the visitor to know the stories behind their favorite art piece, provides detailed information about the Artist and lets them find art venues in nearby areas.
• It allows visitors to experience the arts from a different perspective. Audio and video guides, provide information to the curious visitors. Social media sharing allows them to share their experience with art-lovers, family, and friends.
• Visitors could save information pertaining to their favourite art pieces and paintings and preserve them in their personal art collections. Thus allowing them to recall their personal favourites as and when they need.
• GPS support allows visitors to locate specific zone or locate facilities. Visitors could also snap the QR code to view object specific information and videos from the artists and the curators and share it with the art community.

To say it in few words, Smartphone based museum apps no doubt are developed and intended to benefit the museum visitors. Does it propel one to thinking whether they are compelling and valuable enough to invest time, effort and money for its download and use? Perhaps, few mobile apps need to be tried and experienced to suggest further improvements.