Nowadays, the panorama of the cultural offer is a world where old and new generations move indifferently between the digital and the analogue, personal relationships and Web relationships, computers and smartphones, a universe increasingly made up of 'digital experiences', before content. How can Museums and Cultural Foundations and Institutions orient themselves to establish a new dialogue with the new users of tomorrow, and effectively present content and initiatives in an up-to-date way? The talk aims to provide sufficiently exhaustive indications regarding paths made possible by currently available technology, mobile tagging and augmented reality and the presentation of analyses, research, and use cases.

1. Mobile tagging & Interactive technologies
for Museums and Cultural Institutions.
Best Practices overview.
Federico Ruberti
Milan, 11/11/2014. IES Abroad
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INTRODUCTION
• Museums and cultural institutions around the world today face the
challenge of increasing and maintaining visitor numbers, especially with
younger audiences. A fall in visitors is seen by most as a negative outcome,
both financially and in terms of wider social and educational impact.
• It can happen due to a range of factors, but one of the most important is that
Museums and cultural institutions can often find themselves competing
with the products of the entertainment industry, which at its heart is in the
business of telling a good story.

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INTRODUCTION
A possible solution can be found in the
interactive digital storytelling,
which combines participation with story generation and narration to
focus in on making storytelling more personal and mobile. In other words,
edutainment
something that both educates and entertains for a more engaging,
adaptive and fundamentally enjoyable visitor experience.

4. interactive digital storytelling,
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ENGAGEMENT AND STORYTELLING
Tell me an interesting and engaging story
that makes my conversation more fascinating.

5. interactive digital storytelling,
useful
tell me something that I can use
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ENGAGEMENT AND STORYTELLING
interactive
let me talk
Tell me an interesting and engaging story
that makes my conversation more fascinating.
sharable
true and easy to tell

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ENGAGEMENT AND STORYTELLING
There are several technologies that
nowadays, can make the cultural proposal
more fascinating, and in so doing both
educate and entertain visitors.
Let’s have a look at some of them…

7. TOPIC
Mobile tagging / QR Code
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QR CODE
Quick Response Code: two-dimensional barcode) first designed in 1994 by Denso
Wave in Japan to rapidly scan components in the automotive sector.

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QR CODE
A QR Code is machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item
to which it is attached.

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QR CODE
Simply, QR Codes are barcodes that anyone
can print and use with a QR Code Reader…
the only limit then is your imagination…

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QR CODE

12. www.setqr.com
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BRANDED QR CODE
To promote their online edition and mobile site, TIME produced a series of
branded QR Codes tied to their iconic "red frame" campaign.
These codes were featured in major magazines, including TIME, and on
billboards in the US. The codes featured link to articles on the TIME website.

13. Most common usages of QR Codes in
Museums and Cultural Istitutions:
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BRANDED QR CODE
•Translating exhibits into other languages
•Communicating exhibits digitally
• Interacting with exhibits
•Providing more information and related media
•Evaluating more diverse sample of visitors

14. Qr codes may establish a connection
between the physic world and the electronic
one, enhancing the cultural experience with
multimedia and interactive contents.
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QR CODE USAGE

15. DAM Scout: the app. helps visitors to uncover hidden layers of multimedia content,
share them with friends on Facebook, Twitter, or e-mail …”Use it to scan QR codes
wherever you see them in the museum and tune into conversations with artists, seek out
hidden information about the museum, and tap into related content”.
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AUGMENTED REALITY
DENVER ART MUSEUM

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BRANDED QR CODE
The National Aquarium of New Zealand: branded QR code. Visitors hook into the
free Wi-Fi service on entry to the Napier-based aquarium, then scan a series of QR
codes that led to informational video and audio tours, showcasing featured animals
or exhibits, presented by staff members.

17. MANCHESTER ART GALLERY, REMEMBERING SLAVERY: REVEALING HISTORY 2009
QR Code distributed along the exhibition itinerary allow curators to extend the
informativeness of textual and multimedia elements, pushing the limits of space and
time of a traditional exhibition. QR Codes placed alongside the works to enable real-time
access to movies, documents, discussions and contributions without
resorting to invasive and often very expensive installations.
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PERMANENT DISPLAY AT POWERHOUSE MUSEUM
Visitors can access resources and multilingual information through QR codes placed
on the extended label and consult any media extending in time and space, the potential
of the show itself.

19. The catalog and other publications, can be updated, augmented and enhanced
through links to external resources accessed by the QR Code. The publication stops
being a closed universe in the linearity of the text, and becomes an element of the
complex world of the hypertext.
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UNIVERSITY OF BATH, LIBRARY
QR Codes can facilitate the storage of information such as web addresses, references,
publications, and so on.

21. FRIDAY NIGHT ACTIVITIES AT THE CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM IN MONTREAL
QR Codes can be entered in the promotional material to promote exhibitions, special
openings, special events and so on.
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22. QR Codes can be entered in the promotional material to promote exhibitions, special
openings, special events and so on. (Street & Guerrilla Marketing as well).
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THE JFK LIBRARY AND MUSEUM:

23. VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE, RUSSIAN PAVILLON, 2012
Every surface inside the top floor of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Architecture
Biennale was covered in QR codes, which visitors decode to explore ideas for a new
Russian city dedicated to science.
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QR CODE
Let’s think about QR Code usages
all the way around… any ideas?

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QR CODE USAGES
NCR Mobile Cash Withdrawal
Consumers pre-stage the transaction via the NCR App, and choose the
amount of their transaction. Once at their bank’s ATM, the pre-staged cash
transaction will be authorised and funds dispensed just showing the QR Code
to the QR Code rader embedded in the ATM machine.

26. MANCHESTER ART GALLERY, REMEMBERING SLAVERY: REVEALING HISTORY 2009
QR code on admissions ticket can be used to track visitors behaviour and get an
incredible amount of information about their experience.
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27. Usage Where Output
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Display Wall Text
QR CODE
The QR Code links to a web page that presents
insights and eventually multimedia content (videos,
texts, images, links ...).
Display Labels
QR Code presents the content of the label in the
multilingual version or integrate the content. The QR
Code can refer you to a webpage that has media
related work.
Publish
Catalogues,
Brochures …
Web: deepening with multimedia content and web
Advertising
Advertising posters
Guerrilla, street Mkt.
…
For information on opening times and closing, ticket
prices, special openings, special events, and so on.

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OPEN POINTS
QR Codes require very little investment to implement: minimal cost to
create, minimal cost to display, as it is usually already covered by the
cost to print the main content. However…
• Most visitors do not use QR codes because:
• It’s difficult to scan them.
• A right software is needed.
• Above all, very often they bring to a useless site or set of information.…
• QR codes tend to exclude visitors who lack access to technology.

29. “If I am going to have to install or worse still, find
on my phone, a QR code reading application then
the reason I am going to all this trouble has to be
really really worthwhile”.
Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum 2009
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OPEN POINTS

30. “The idea isn’t to shove technology into places
it isn’t needed. The idea is to make sure the
right technology, in the right amount, is
available, in the right context.”
Sree Sreenivasan,
First Chief Digital Officer Metropolitan Museum of Art
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OPEN POINTS

31. TOPIC
Augmented reality
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AUGMENTED REALITY

33. Storytelling is key to the museum experience.
Non-linear digital tales transform dusty museum
in interesting places… visitors are willing to invest
time and energy into interactive tools.
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AUGMENTED REALITY

34. Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or
indirect, view of the real-world environment
whose elements are augmented by computer-generated
sensory input such as sound, video,
graphics or GPS data.
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AUGMENTED REALITY

35. MANCHESTER ART GALLERY, REMEMBERING SLAVERY: REVEALING HISTORY 2009
fiducial
markers
• AR 3D viewers: allow to place life-size 3D models in the environment.
• AR browsers enrich the camera feed with contextual information. For example, you
can point your smartphone at a building to display its history.
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object
recognition

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37. A Gift for Athena: children are asked to complete four challenges about the Parthenon
temple to help get the gift back. On the way, they will uncover fascinating details about
statues, stories behind many of the people depicted on the friezes, and the epic history
of ancient Greece.
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BRITISH MUSEUM -

38. The Chess project (Cultural Heritage Experiences through Socio-personal interactions
and Storytelling) takes digital storytelling much further combining interactive content
and augmented reality. The project relies on visitor profiling, matching visitors to pre-determined
“personas" and the system constantly adapts to a visitor's preferences and
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behaviour.
EU-FUNDED CHESS PROJECT

39. PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART :
Pentagram: New Work, Attenborough Studio at The Natural History Museum. Use of
cutting edge technology to recreate the past and bring to life the story of evolution.
Independent screens, web cams and handheld devices allow the audience to take part
in a virtual journey back through their evolutionary past to where extinct creatures
appear to roam around them in the studio.
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40. PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART :
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41. TOPIC
Location-based s
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42. Location-based services provide contents
which are dynamically customised according
to the user's location.
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AUGMENTED REALITY

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LOCATION-BASED SERVICES
• Current common applications for location-based services include advertising,
news, social networking, and similar services. In the consumer sector, many
businesses are capitalizing on this by rewarding users who check-in to their
locations.
• The next and most compelling development for location-based services is the
prospect of indoor geolocation, which could provide visitors with very specific
information tailored to their exact location within a building, allowing fine-tuned
information or services to be accessed that are very specific to where they are, not
only relative to the planet’s surface, but in 3D space, so that even different floors
of a building can be identified.

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PREMESSA
Geo-fence…
a virtual perimeter for a real-world
geographic area.

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LOCATION-BASED SERVICES
• Under the concept of Geo-fencing, a museum’s website would know where a visitor
was and would localise information and push it to them. For example, a museum’s
website would push information to a mobile device about the visiting hours and
admission fee if a user was within the vicinity of the institution’s entrance, or collections
information if he or she was standing directly in front of an artifact.
• Museums can use these technologies to deliver content where the user is, especially
within the space of the museum. Because it can target a small area, we can design
experiences that are focused to specific objects. It's where the visitors is, when they
want it.
• However many location-based services projects are currently underway, this topic falls
on the mid-term horizon mainly because of the costs related to retrofitting galleries with
the appropriate technologies and accuracy limitations of current indoor positioning
systems.

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PREMESSA
“a smartphone knows if its owner has been to
several history museums and can use that data to
provide recommendations for further exploration”.
NMC Horizon Report: 2013 Museum Edition

47. FERNBANK MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY IN ATLANTA
Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta partnered with Cisco and AT&T to
build a next-generation Wi-Fi network and mobile app to enhance the museum’s
visitor experience.
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PREMESSA
Fernbank Museum of Natural History’s app tracks visitors’ locations once they enter
the museum to deliver a combination of audio, video, touchscreen interactive
animation, sketchbook activities and question-and-answer challenges, while also
encouraging sharing of the experience through social media platforms.

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ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
The Art Institute of Chicago uses an indoor GPS system powered by Meridian to take
visitors on customised tours organised by occasion, theme, collection, and time. Each
tour showcases six to ten works of art, with descriptions and associated digital assets
artworks with associated digital assets.

50. DECORDOVA SCULPTURE PARK AND MUSEUM -
Through a location sensitive audio platform, museum visitors navigated through the
park and encounter sounds in the form of different musical instruments and melodies
on their mobile devices. Additionally, visitors are encouraged to engage with the
artwork by recording their observations.
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PREMESSA
The Timken Museum of Art launched a prototype of a mobile app that serves
information about artworks based on visitors’ location within the galleries. A
PlaceSticker device is assigned to each artwork, sending low-power radio signals to
visitors’ smartphones and tablets to determine their location and deliver content:
go.nmc.org/timken.

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THE ROYAL BC MUSEUM -
The Royal BC Museum in Canada worked with the company WiFarer to create an app
that enables each visitor to personalise their museum exploration based on a map that
pinpoints visitors and guides them to preferred artworks and collections.
The location based content adds more in-depth interaction to each exhibit: .

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THE ROYAL BC MUSEUM -
Just a few steps: Log onto the WiFi signal RBCMWifarer, Open your web browser, Go to
the Royal BC Museum website, Press ACCEPT after you review the Terms of Use,
Download the app from Google Play or the App Store, Open the app and …. finally enjoy!

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ROYAL BOTANIC GARDEN, KEW
Kew uses GPS and WiFi technology to offer visitors new ways for way-finding and
interpretation. The app guides visitors over 300 acres of outdoor space and through
three glass houses, along with offering interactive media about surrounding plants and
trees on the Digging Deeper section of their official iPhone app, which uses
greenhouse-based QR codes to access text, image and video content.

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