Museum of Islamic Art (MOIA), Doha, Qatar

Posted by wsguerin on | February 11, 2010 | 3 Comments

In December ’09 I visited the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. As is well known, it is located on a small island off Doha’s Corniche (waterfront park and walkway.) In short, it is staggering achievement and belongs in a very short list of top museums world-wide. They got what the Pei’d for!

But aside from architecture per se, Wilmotte’s interiors, and the exhibition, and artifact mount system design is simply superlative; like the art, it is tightly structured but flexible. Stunningly lit, pretty well organized, my only quibble were the 15″ LCD panels looping in each gallery which were basically useless, distracting, and about 10% are already broken. I could go on about the design details but to the heart of the matter: the multimedia tour guide.

Disclosure: I was on a team that proposed a competitive system back in 2006 but I have to admit I am envious of the solution. While I didn’t tear the case off, I think it was a Fujitsu WinMo PDA with a custom interface. It was completely stable.

As in any device, there are the interface, content, and logistics to consider.

Interface

One annoyance struck me immediately, you were forced to listen to the intro and how to use the thing. I’ll try on the next trip to break that. (I couldn’t make the return visit so I don’t know for sure)

The screen layout was very pleasant, had excellent contrast, with a burgundy active area, charcoal controls and object title bands, with white type. All very readable in the darkened galleries.

The interface “buttons” were sized and spaced perfectly and I never made a mistaken entry.

Four control buttons run down the left side: Back, Home, Number pad, Map.

Numbers in the display cases, either alongside an artifact or standing in for clusters of objects like astrolabes, were entered using the number pad. This brought up what I call the Object Main screen.

On the Object Main screen there were 1 to 4 content asset choices, usually at least two.

The first asset was always “A Closer Look.” This is an odd phrase given that you had yet to have a first look. The Siguide equivalent was “About.”

There were no sub-menus so the other content titles were straightforward “one and done” taps as I call them. To keep the interface so admirably clean, the Content asset type was not signified eg video, audio, text etc.

A major interface annoyance was that when you entered an object number, the first content asset, “A Closer Look”, required another tap. Entering the number should be considered enough of an affirmative choice and that way you could let the device dangle on its lanyard and continue to look. I suspect this number-entry/tap may have been a major point of debate in the design process but since the asset menu persists through the initial audio, and it’s easy to quit a piece, I would have gone the other way.

The map button initialized a very informative world-map interface to appear. This was a really deep set of content; many Aribic cities, at least 30, were featured from India to Seville. Ken Burns-style panned images with voice-over communicated the importance and history of the cities and the art that flowered there. If an object was from Isfahan, tapping the Map icon in the Object Main screen mode brings up Isfahan and its content.

Disappointingly, I didn’t see a museum map on the device. For a large museum, it would have been very useful to be able to link object and museum space, and vice versa. Tap a gallery, see the objects. From an object, see where it is or where you are. My point is this: the numeric entry interface works great if you are in a gallery with a pile of stuff to investigate, but there was no way to “surf” the collection that I could find. If you are in the cafe on a break, and want to poke around to see what’s where, a spatial interface would have been ideal. Developers shoiuld always consider a three pronged approach for object interrogation: textual, numeric, and graphic.

Content:

I believe the upfront choices were English/Arabic and Adult /Child, but I didn’t get to return to try the kids content.

The sound quality was superb – deep and rich. The Arabic-male narrator was mature, warm, and conversationally knowledgeable. He delivered with hints of emotional inflection, as when describing Shah Jahan’s amulet of grief for his wife who died delivering their 13th child. He built the Taj Mahal in her memory.

The content assets were primarily audio, at least 80% I think. But, when an image, moving or otherwise, appeared on the screen, the copywriters gracefully incorporated a “now, if you would look at your screen you will see….” or whatever variation fit. It worked brilliantly. I have been a proponent of using more multimedia in these systems, but I thought the balance here was exactly what the subjects and objects needed. From what I saw, there was no camera-shot video in the guide, it was all animated stills with voice-over.

Asset run-times were longish. I’d often walk away looking for the next great thing while listening to the previous object’s information. That was fine because the asset came to its end about the same time you found another object of interest. It was consistently a near ideal pacing.

In a multimedia tour guide’s development, it is critical to determine how many objects will be interpreted. Hard to say how many MOIA objects were interpreted, no more than 10-15%, but invariably they were the significant ones you’d want to know about anyway.

Logistics

The museum is free, as is the guide in return for an ID. Suprisingly, there is no marketing, barely even signage for the guide and the tour desk is equally “obscure.” It’s in English and Arabic and looking around, I was surprised that the take-up wasn’t higher, as for me, it was an essential tool. I’d guess it was in the 15 to 20% range at most.

This was a straightforward closed-loop distribution scenario and they didn’t have to tie devices to a specific person.

It was evening when I visited so there was one attendant at the desk, it could handle three perhaps. The desk itself was clean and uncluttered as the designers were able to know this was an essential element of the lobby and it was perfectly integrated; no loose PDAs, cords, headsets could be seen.

The display concept was such that many objects had their own case. BTW, these were not your plain old pedestals and vitrines. They were gasket sealed, 15 to 20mm water-clear glass with no green tint, often spanning 4meters floor to ceiling. Other displays types included a matte finish, 100mm thick granite counters about 1 meter off the floor. Objects were fiber optically lit; the artifact mounts were so subtle, so perfectly made, they reminded me of childhood dental appliances! Object labels and number tags were in medium gray with white type and clearly visible.

While the device was perfectly stable, I heard from a colleague that their 15 year old son managed to get past the tour program and play with the operating system’s games so securitizing that secret key-combo for administration is still an important factor for any platform to consider.

Summary

The MOIA guide is a well refined, not too adventurous, tour guide. That said, it is an essential tool to have during the visit if you are not familiar with Islamic Art and Architecture.

My wish-list for the guide is short:

1. An interactive Museum Map for collections surfing.

2. A session-based personal scrapbook so you could say to friends “did you see this?” (the enhancement is of course a web-based scrapbook but it adds a lot of complexity)

3. I had a couple of hours to visit and didn’t see half the museum so I’d have appreciated a highlight tour.

Comments

3 Responses to “Museum of Islamic Art (MOIA), Doha, Qatar”

Nancy Proctor
February 12th, 2010 @ 4:36 pm

Thanks for this review, Scott! Though I was involved in the sale of this tour solution, I was not part of the development team and still haven’t been back to Doha to try it – I look forward to it!

If your estimate of a 15-20% take-up rate is right, that is actually very high for a permanent collection tour; 5% is closer to the norm in traditional audio tours. Sadly, the lack of good signage and marketing for museum tours is standard, though.
wsguerin
February 13th, 2010 @ 3:48 pm

I know it’s high, probably because it’s free.
Nancy Proctor
February 19th, 2010 @ 8:16 pm

Ah yes, in that case the take-up is very low. As you say, a marketing problem!

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