Dieter KSCHWENDT-MICHEL | Gerhard SINDELAR
(beyondarts GmbH, Klosterneuburg, Austria)

Keywords: app-guide; museum; story-telling; tourism

Abstract:
Museums at home and abroad are looking for up-to-date guiding tools. They seek multimedia-based solutions with exciting content that work on the visitors’ common mobile devices.
Why? For once the still predominating house-owned devices create high hardware, service and personnel costs. At the same time the average guest spends 2.8 days in the city and has no more than 2 hours for a museum visit. So what he or she needs is a professional selection from the extensive range of exhibits on offer.
There are indeed various app projects as guiding tools in the fields of art and culture but hardly any solutions that present themselves as real alternatives to house-owned devices like the classic audio guide.
The scope statement covers, among other things, exciting, house-researched, preselected content. Multilingual audio files alongside text and images. It is only in this way that an app-guide can be a real alternative to house-owned devices. Everything, including features like geo-positioning, must function offline after a 1-time download. Since continual web connection creates high roaming costs, especially for foreign guests.
In addition the app guide provides cultural institutions with a very effective viral marketing tool: users take the app guide home on their mobile devices as a multimedia souvenir after visiting the museum. They share their experience with family and friends in person and on the Internet, thus significantly increasing publicity of what the museum has to offer.
In our presentation we will show how our app guides work, what features they offer and explain their wide range of uses.