Information Architecture

Towards a new architecture for mobile content and services in museums

The new mobile architecture called for in my “Manifesto” can be summarized in three steps:

Offer the visitor what the curator sees in both overview and detail: -^-+-o-/-?-
Then give them access to everyone else’s vision: * ! $ % @ “” ?
And to related functionality, such as messaging, emailing, camera, voting, favoriting, commenting, etc.

Another way to represent this is as a multi-tiered architecture:

+-+-+-+-+ The Soundtracks
o o o o o The Soundbites
/\ | /\ | /\ Links & Functions

Here is an image that Shelley Mannion (@smannion) created during the June 3, 2009 Handheld Conference to illustrate one interface that puts these 3 types of content into relation with one another in ArtBabble:

Soundtrack, soundbites and links co-exist in the ArtBabble interface.

This still is from the video, Meet William Christenberry, that is available in the Smithsonian American Art Museum channel on ArtBabble.org.