Reviews
Independent reviews of tours and mobile programs
...of cultural sites, cities, monuments and places of natural beauty, wherever they may be found.Can you recommend a tour or mobile interpretation program?
Help us build a comprehensive guide to audio, cellphone, multimedia, mobile web and app-based tours at museums and cultural sites around the world by adding it to this index - and post a review below if you can!If you are a museum or other cultural site, you may create a page to describe your project in the Projects section of the wiki.
If you are a vendor, please add information about your Products & Services in that section of the site.National Galleries of Scotland: Impressionist Garden
Posted by Sarah on | August 24, 2010 | No Comments
A SURPRISINGLY LOVELY APP – PROOF THAT YOU DON’T NEED TO BE AN EXPERT TO PRODUCE AN EXPERT APP
by Sarah Dines
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). Read the full review…
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American Museum of Natural History Explorer App
Posted by robinwo on | August 18, 2010 | 2 Comments
Preface
The authors of this review have added the following preface to explain the disparity between their experience with AMNH’s Explorer app and the experience that other users may have.
The authors tested the app on their iPhones using OS3. However we subsequently learned that the app is optimized for use with OS4 and we have now seen that the new operating system provides a better wayfinding experience than the one we describe below. Therefore, we suggest that AMNH add an advisory to the signage posted in the museum that promotes the app. We also think it would be helpful to add an introductory screen to the app itself, alerting visitors to the fact that the app works better on OS4 than OS3, encouraging them to seek out the App helpers who are circulating around the museum, and urging people to take the survey and provide feedback. This would alleviate some visitor frustrations.
However, even with OS4, the app will take you to the gallery with the desired object, but not direct you right up to it. Visitors need to do some work to orient themselves and locate the object in most cases; upon second visitation, we found that the map itself proves more effective within galleries with unusual structures than it does within the galleries with primarily symmetrical structures that we encountered on our first visit.
We also look forward to expanded social media capabilities and content offerings in future iterations and believe even more strongly that the “seeds for future impressive functionality” are there.
Review
In his article for Gizmodo, Kyle VanHemert wrote, “The app, which was developed by Spotlight Mobile, funded by Bloomberg, and runs on a Wi-Fi network implemented by Cisco and Accenture, has a slick visual design to match its impressive functionality.” We would agree with the slick visual design, but think it’s more accurate to say that the app contains “the seeds for future impressive functionality.”
There are three basic components to the app: wayfinding, object identifcation and social media links.
Wayfinding
The AMNH Explorer app, according to the press surrounding its release, claims to make the use of paper maps obsolete. Yet as we tested it on a crowded Sunday morning at the museum, we found ourselves pining for a paper map. Two basic, visitor-orienting paper map conveniences were missing from the app: an easily-accessible at-a-glance overview of each floor and simple naming of galleries. Without these visual cues close at hand, we found it hard to connect where we were within the larger physical context of the Museum to where we were on the app map.
Upon entrance, we immediately chose the Highlights tour with “nearest to your location” directions on one of our phones and proceeded into the first gallery. We each used our phones through the whole experience, but the second phone required 11 minutes to connect the app to the AMNH’s Wi-Fi network before we could proceed. 11 minutes is a long time for either a single visitor or a parent with a child tugging on the sleeve. If we hadn’t been determined to use it, we would otherwise have given up.
One of the most disconcerting parts of our experience was that we literally spent our entire journey through the museum staring at the screens of our phones. With the step-by-step directions, we found ourselves concentrating on the moving map. Sometimes our movements en route triggered the next screen of directions; sometimes we needed to manually tap the arrow to know where to go next. Occasionally, we looked up to find out whether or not we were in the correct place.
Though floor maps are provided within the app, they’re not easy to access; the visitor needs to leave the step-by-step directions, choose a floor map, exit the floor map, and then again enter the tour in order to re-enter the directions. The directions experience itself felt so myopic that the one of us who was an AMNH novice felt that she left the museum with little more Museum layout understanding than when she arrived. We suggest that having a toggle function between the specific directions and larger maps would be helpful for orientation. Adding the names of the galleries would also help visitors locate themselves as they move through the space.
Once we entered the correct gallery following the tour directions, we faced additional challenges. The app is capable of successfully locating you within 33 feet of your exact position, so when you’re within 33 feet of the desired object, the App says you have arrived. But there are many objects within a 33 foot radius in the galleries! The floor plans show a thumbnail of the visitor-desired object without giving specific orienting visual cues; in a gallery packed with objects, we rarely found our object easily.
Then when we chose the next item on the tour, we received different next steps easily 40% of the time – despite literally standing next to one another. In order to proceed to the next object, we spent minutes re-orienting ourselves to the map, figuring out where our last object was and which direction to go next. The app’s promise of precise directions gave rise to frustration and discouraged the tendency to explore. Without that promise, we would more likely have tended to wander the gallery to discover things.
Simple visual cues could make the gallery orientation much more effective. Color-coding relevant objects within the map and possibly in the gallery graphics could easily assist with visual reference. Simultaneously showing the location of all the objects in one gallery that are on the tour – instead of only showing them one at a time – would provide visitors with multiple points by which to orient themselves.
Also, we would suggest revisions to the overall information navigation. When arriving at an object, the screens automatically flipped so quickly that we found it difficult to read the introductory text. We frequently tapped through a circular sequence of screens to make sure that we viewed all of the information provided.
Object Information
The provided object information felt like a very small reward for the amount of work required. In its next iterations, we would suggest that AMNH provide multiple layers of access for visitors: a brief description; a more comprehensive summary; and access to deeper research. The information currently provided did not feel sufficient for parents to help their children engage with an object, or for any curious visitor.
Social Media
The built-in social media functions that allow you to tweet, email, or bookmark the object you’re standing in front of strangely link to a web page for the gallery as a whole rather than to the current object record. In future iterations, we would suggest modifying this function to be object-specific. We noticed how many people took photos of themselves, friends and family in front of objects; it would be a pleasant addition to allow visitors to take and send their own photos of the object along with the posts.
The ‘find a nearest bathroom’ function and ‘find the nearest exit’ functions worked reasonably well – though our attempt with the exit directions had us standing at one point at a dead end. We appreciated that directions for going for down gave the visitor the option to take either the elevator or the stairs; we would suggest that this option be given for going up too, instead of offering only elevator directions.
Though there was much that we found unsatisfactory, we re-emphasize that there are great seeds for improvement within the current application. The Explorer app provides a wide variety of functionality; revisions to the visual design, the insertion (or ability to link to) additional information, and the execution of additional user testing could turn an app with potential into a very useful tool.
Gizmodo reference: http://gizmodo.com/5599789/american-museum-of-natural-history-explorer-app-makes-paper-museum-maps-ancient-history
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MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art iPhone App
Posted by Sarah on | August 17, 2010 | No Comments
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 12th in the iTunes store. Read the full review…
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Asian Art Museum: iPhone App
Posted by Sarah on | August 11, 2010 | No Comments
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. Read the full review..
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SFMOMA’s “75 Years of Looking Forward: The Anniversary Show” Multimedia Tour
Posted by Sarah on | August 4, 2010 | No Comments
ELEGANT. SIMPLE. ENGAGING – A CASE OF LESS NOT IN FACT BEING LESS
by Sarah Dines
Last week, if someone had asked me “what’s the best multimedia tour you’ve ever taken?”, I would have said either Frida Kahlo or Rothko at Tate Modern. And in fairness, I might have been accused of being a bit partial since by way of disclaimer, I used to work at the company that produced those tours. But today, I’d add SFMOMA’s 75th anniversary show exhibition tour to the small group of multimedia tours that have totally nailed it. Read full review..
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MEanderthal from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History
Posted by Nancy Proctor on | June 7, 2010 | 1 Comment
Free from iTunes and the Android Marketplace; Reviewed by Robin White Owen.
Tags: android > app > iPhone > MEanderthal > MediaCombo > morph > National Museum of Natural History > Neanderthal > Robin White Owen > Smithsonian
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StreetMuseum from the Museum of London
Posted by Nancy Proctor on | June 7, 2010 | No Comments
Free from iTunes; Reviewed by Joe McKendrick
Tags: app > AR > augmented reality > iPhone > Joe McKendrick > Museum of London > StreetMuseum
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Walking Cinema: Murder on Beacon Hill
Posted by Ed Rodley on | May 16, 2010 | 8 Comments
I have to admit I was very excited to try this mobile tour out. My friend and I made plans in the chilly months to take it for a spin when the warmer weather made traipsing around Boston more palatable. After months of waiting we finally picked a day and set aside an afternoon to try it out. What I found had some real flashes of brilliance to it, but in the end two very dedicated users decided to bale halfway through.
The app starts off very strong. The setting, in the midst of the claustrophobic campus of Mass General Hospital was intriguing. We were literally at the scene of the crime, looking at the last remnants of the building where Mr. Parkman’s body in the privy of Professor Webster’s laboratory. The narration was brisk, a real sense of mystery was invoked, and the navigation was useful. The use of speeded up shots to literally show you where you should go next was very effective.
We also started running into problems immediately. We couldn’t sync our videos, and had only one set of headphones between us. The result was we had to move apart from each other every time a video played. When we stood too close, the slightly-off sync narration was a real distraction. The narrator’s voice was also way too soft to heard over the din of the hospital grounds. The load time for the videos was also a distraction. “Are you started yet? No. You? No, oh wait! There! No… Oh, now I’m starting…”
The theatricality of the writing and the video production is much higher than a lot of the stuff I typically see. At times, I found it jarring, but on the whole it was one of my favorite features. As a self-professed history dork, I was able to dive right in. I am not sure how well someone completely unacquainted with the Parkman murder might fare. The developer in me nagged that more context setting could have been done.
After the first four videos (!), we headed off to the second stop, the former Suffolk County Jail, now the ironically-named Liberty Hotel. The five minute walk had an accompanying audio track, but we needed all our senses to navigate and talk. We also found that the iPhone’s map navigation left a lot to be desired in the warren of streets at MGH. If I didn’t know where to go, getting from stop one to two using the map might have been a problem. After that, the navigation seemed to work very well and I thought the map screen was one of the most well-constructed parts of the app.
When we arrived at the hotel, we dutifully listened to a couple more videos that told us that the jail had been built after the crime and had no role in the story. This would be a theme that continued throughout the tour. The lack of physical connection to the object of the tour was a real concern for me. If I was going to walk across town, I wanted assurance that the places I was going actually had some connection. At the hotel, they did a good job of using the space to talk about mid 19th century views on crime and punishment and even tie it to the players in the murder. They had to work at it, though.
The highlight of the tour, for me, happened in the middle of this stop. At one point, you’re directed to go to the concierge desk and ask them for the “Parkman Game” and play a Victorian version of the game of Life. It seemed like a novel thing, and the concierge had spotted us before we’d even gotten to him. He proffered the game and ushered us to a table and we spent the next fifteen minutes getting a heavy dose of morality. It was great fun, it really tied the themes of the narrative to the space and it broke us out of the “staring at the screen” mode. Having the waitress come by and ask if we wanted drinks didn’t hurt, either.
The whole dynamic of the experience had changed through that interaction with a stranger. We were playing a game, pretending to be 19th century Bostonians, and having a gas! The concierge told us how often other people came by, had an anecdote or two about the producers of the tour, and obviously enjoyed having his hotel be an attraction to people who weren’t staying there. If there was one moment to take away from the afternoon, this was it. The right place, the right activity, and a way to make a human connection can make the ordinary extraordinary. We sailed out of the hotel feeling pretty excited. The annoyances seemed well worth the payoff.
The next two stops led us up Charles Street, the fashionable shopping street of Beacon Hill. The next two stops both led us into stores where we had to find things inside that supposedly gave us more insights into the murder. However, neither location seemed to have any connection to anything. Why were stopping here? Did this building have something to do with the murder? No. So why were we standing outside it, watching videos about the trial and the way the press characterized the crime in 1849? I was beginning to worry that I was being led on a wild goose chase. By the time we finished the fourth stop, we‘d watched 13 videos, played a board game, put together a puzzle, and viewed a pop-up book. We’d also spent almost two hours, including walking time, and were only halfway through. We soldiered on to stop five, which actually had a real connection to the story. My flagging spirits were buoyed until we read that the building we were looking at was a private club and please don’t ring the doorbell. We were done.
So how to characterize the app? Parts of it I really liked, parts were annoying, some of the activities were great. It was a really mixed bag that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone who wasn’t already dying to spend a day wandering around Beacon Hill for the simple reason that the developers didn’t do a good enough job making the physicality of the tour, the going from place to place, matter. I could’ve stayed at home and watched most of it on TV or my computer. The essence of the mobile app, the “being there” in the flesh, didn’t have any value most of the time. I was left feeling a bit disappointed, and a bit misled.
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Review: “How It Is” from Tate Modern
Posted by Jonathan Alger on | February 28, 2010 | 1 Comment
Overview
This is an informal review of the “How It Is” iPhone app by Tate Modern. At the bottom, you will find a quick reference list of features and pros and cons, and also a series of useful links to relevant online sites, other reviews, etc. As it is an informal review, you may find facts or references that need improvement. Please don’t hesitate to contact the author if so.
Introduction
As a designer fascinated with the potential of integrating web, mobile and exhibit experiences, I have been testing a lot of apps lately. I downloaded Tate Modern‘s first iPHone/iPod app, “How It Is,” as soon as I heard about it. I was standing in my kitchen at the time (this becomes important later, trust me). I started it up, tried it out for a minute … and deleted it.
And that’s when it got interesting.
Creepy and Irresistible
“How It Is” is a huge, ominous, dark, immersive installation by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka, a “giant grey steel structure with a vast dark chamber,” currently on view in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. Museum visitors can “walk underneath it, listening to the echoing sound of footsteps on steel, or enter via a ramp into a pitch black interior, creating a sense of unease.” Online exhibit reviews use words like “creepy” and “irresistible,” sometimes in the same sentence.
The project has several web and mobile components: a web page for the exhibit, a second website that is an online “exploration” of the project, and an iPhone/iPod app, Tate Modern’s first. Both the “exploration” website and the app are done as full-screen, first-person immersion activities. Both were designed by Champagne Valentine. (The web version uses Papervision technology, a interesting tool for animating 3D Flash experiences.)
(I should, by the way, admit that I have only experienced the online parts. This unfortunately means I can’t actually review the whole app. Part of it, a game, is triggered only upon approaching the museum. Feel free to add to this if you’ve actually visited in person and unlocked the hidden feature.)
What’s an App?
Back to my kitchen. I didn’t know any of that background yet when I hit that INSTALL button in the mobile App Store. I had seen someone mention the app briefly, and went and got it. I was expecting an “app” to test: you know, a colorful, user-friendly, zero-learning-curve bit of software that’s useful and/or entertaining for a little while. A nice augmented audio tour with good voiceover talent, perhaps, like many other mobile museum apps. But what I got, I thought, seemed deliberately unfriendly, impossible to use, had no apparent purpose and made me feel vaguely jumpy. Where was the white background, stacked list navigation, and predictable wipe transitions that go “shhhick”?
The problem wasn’t the app. It was me. After I deleted it, I had second thoughts, a guilty feeling I had missed something standing there in my kitchen. Online, I looked around on the “How It Is” iTunes preview page. A past user had left a comment that this is an “experience” unlike other apps, that it’s much better in darkness. Oh, and that you need headphones. That’s demanding, I thought, but also intriguing. I reloaded it, started it up, plugged in a pair of sound-reducing earbuds, and headed for the basement, where it’s darker and quieter to begin with.
In the Basement
Once I made it to the basement, kept the lights low, and put in my headphones, things got much better. The on-screen graphics became much easier to see, though they still stayed very dark (“black and white” would be a flattering description, this app is just “black”, but in a good way). The sound is also very important, and the special feature in the sound won’t work with the little speakers in the iPhone, no matter how you turn them up (more on that below). In the basement, I realized that this is one of the more interesting apps out there.
This app is a widescreen, first-person immersive program, like the popular Brothers In Arms action games for iPhone, or Call of Duty, or the classic Doom. These are all fighting games, with peril around every corner; I can understand why Tate chose this genre for this app.
It doesn’t deviate from the widescreen orientation, and all action happens in the screen. Your view is a view inside the exhibit space, and you move through the space in the first person to trigger sounds, short video clips, and encounter mysterious floating text and strange objects. The app version is less media-rich than the “exploration” website, but the two are very much cut from the same cloth. The app is the mini version of the web piece, more or less, which I think is a very interesting way to approach a museum mobile project.
It’s very dark, and bleak, and not what you expect. It’s not clear what you’re supposed to do, for one thing, and if you are looking for immediate clarity, you’ll not only be confused, you might even delete it. (Though I can’t imagine who would who do such a thing.) But these aren’t bad characteristics in this case. These characteristics are simply the same as the immersive art work itself, sitting there in the Tate’s Turbine Hall. And in that sense, this app is great.
This Tour is the Art
Frankly, the first time around, I expected a tour, something akin to Yours, Vincent, Love Art, iAfrica, or the Dinosaurs app from AMNH, all of which are sitting on my iPhone right now after a binge of testing (see reviews by others on this wiki). These are all basically either audio tours with visuals added in (first two) or slide shows with a few extras (last two). The “How It Is” app is something completely different. This app, I believe, isn’t an interpretation of the experience. It is the experience. The feeling you get doing this app is akin to the feeling you get from actually being in a piece of modern installation art. And for an exhibit designer like me, that’s exciting. I’m looking for ways that web, mobile and other experiences can be integrated with exhibit experiences, not be companion reference pieces, and you can’t get much more integrated than this. (Well, actually, you can, but I’ll save that for another time.)
At this point you may be asking “But if this is the experience, and it’s so interesting, won’t people just do this and never visit my museum?” I don’t think you should worry. It’s not the same as being in the installation, of course, and not the same as visiting Tate Modern. It’s a miniature version of those things, on a little glowing screen, after all. I think that for people who would be interested in the art piece itself, this app will make them even more interested. Take me, for example. I want to go see the piece in person even more, and I’ve mentioned it enthusiastically to a number of my friends.
The Role of Sound
Don’t forget those headphones. The sound is special in this app: it is 3D sound, which means that the sound coming from a virtual source on screen (some interesting floating thing that makes soft screechy noises, let’s say) appears to come from that direction no matter where you move. If a screechy thing is in front of you, the sound seems to be in front of you. If you move to the right of it, it seems to be coming from your left, and the screeching seems further away. Without headphones, or I suppose good speakers separated widely in a room sound system, you wouldn’t get this at all. This is a big part of what makes this app effective and memorable, because sound augments all the visual experiences.
Screen Orientation
As I mentioned above, the orientation is locked in widescreen. You hold your iPhone sideways all the time, not vertically, and not in a combination of orientations. Some of the “tour” type apps I mentioned above require you to constantly spin your iPhone as they switch from vertical to horizontal, and I didn’t realize how crazy this made me until I experienced How It Is. I believe a locked orientation, particularly in the less-common widescreen direction, is key to making a deeper, more immersive experience that you will remember. Of course, this wouldn’t work well on other mobile platforms that can’t switch orientation as fluidly, like Blackberrys or straight-up mobile phones browsing the mobile web, but I don’t think you could run this kind of immersion on the mobile web anyway.
Joystick
The way you get around in the app is with an on-screen joystick. For anyone who has done any gaming, a little touchscreen joystick is a somewhat laughable concept at first. And for those who are not used to video games, it might even be so unnatural that it thwarts your attempt to enjoy the app at all at first. Either way, you get used to it after a while and forget that it’s there, but I would say it is the one thing about this app that didn’t convince me. The rest of it is quite elegant and clever, the joystick isn’t. But since I can’t think of another way it could have been done, and since touchscreen joysticks are quite common in iPhone games, I don’t want to overstate it as a problem.
Wrapup
“How It Is” is an inspiring mobile museum experience, even verging on revolutionary. It is an excellent example of software genre matched to museum genre (first-person immersive game vs. installation art piece) and it goes well beyond the typical handheld tour to the point where the mobile experience has to be considered part of the art experience itself. It also holds a promise for new kind of museum mobile project, where well-integrated exhibit, website and mobile applications work together as parallel channels of experience, augmenting the visitor experience inside and outside the museum. I hope I will see many more apps like “How It Is.” My kitchen and my basement are waiting.
Quick Reference
Platform: iPhone app
Other platforms?: Yes, web version is similar
Genre: first-person immersive
Orientation: widescreen, fixed
Closed Captioning: none
Sound: rich 3D sound
Pros: very immersive, excellent use of sound, makes you feel like you are literally in the art
Cons: joystick nav is a bit clunky but necessary, app version has fewer goodies than web version
Recommended: yes
Links:
Tate Modern:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/
“How It Is” Web Site:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/default.shtm
“How It Is” Web Experience:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/explore/
“How It Is” App:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/howitisapp.shtm
Champagne Valentine:
http://www.nexusproductions.com//directors/champagne-valentine/
iTunes Preview Site:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/how-it-is/id346192408?mt=8
CreativeApplications.net Coverage of How It Is App (and piles more incredibly interesting apps):
http://www.creativeapplications.net/iphone/how-it-is-iphone-events/
Creativity Review:
http://creativity-online.com/work/tate-modern-how-it-is-app/18951
Papervision:
http://blog.papervision3d.org/
About the Author:
Jonathan Alger follows new developments in exhibit design, museum planning and interactive public space at jonathanalger.com. He is a founding partner of the multidisciplinary design firm C&G Partners.
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Review of iAfrica: Connecting with Sub-Saharan Art, an iPhone app from MIA
Posted by robinwo on | February 18, 2010 | No Comments
Robin White reviews the iphone app iAfrica: Connecting with Sub-Saharan Art, an iPhone app from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, on her blog, mediacombo.net/blog
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