The Bruce Museum educates visitors about art and natural history in Greenwich, Connecticut. They offer a live marine animal touch tank, access to meteorites, and other natural wonders. They also are able to give more detail about their exhibits using a mobile audio guide.
Is an audio guide for you? How easy is it to set up?
We Learned from Volunteer Program Manager/New Media Developer Mary Ann Lendenmann that setup of a mobile audio guide is “no more intimidating than using a phone even for those who fear computers and keyboards”.
She shared, in the webinar, how visitors engage with audio guides and leave having learned something new.
Visitors All Learn Differently Mobile Helps Them Choose Their Own Path
1. Visitors All Learn Differently
Mobile Helps Them Choose Their Own Path
Tuesday, March 19
2. About Guide by Cell
● Cloud-based, no downloads
● 14 years in business
● No company in U.S. offers our
unique approach & tools
● 4,000 clients in 10 countries
○ Bruce Museum
○ Monterey Bay Aquarium
4. We help solve the problem of
visitor engagement
● Attendance down or flat
● Competition for visitors attention
● No one wants to use a bulky tape deck
for an audio tour
● Using traditional fundraising methods
5. We know how to
increase engagement
● Encourage patrons to use their cell phones at the
museum by offering an audio tour
● Provide added content with a smartphone tour
● Invite visitors interaction with Augmented Reality and
GPS wayfinding
● Create text messaging games and interactions
● Increase donation with our mobile fundraising tools
6. Secret Ingredients
● Visitors use their own phone to dial in to an
audio tour
● Create a mobile web page for every exhibit
with more information than can fit on a
traditional wall sign
9. Facts about
Bruce Museum
● An art and natural history museum in Greenwich, Connecticut
● Educates visitors about through art and natural history exhibits that
include a live marine animal touch tank
10. How are you using
mobile?
To provide the general public with more
detail about the exhibits that they are expecting
12. Cellphone Tour
● Prompted by numbered signs
by each exhibit, the user calls in
audio line for the museum
● Can select audio stop by
number or progress from stop
to stop
● Past audio tours have included
interviews with museum staff,
the artist for that exhibit, or
history about the exhibit
14. Average Age of
Visitors
● Are patrons families? Seniors? Younger crowd?
● How do clientele demographics impact what is
displayed in the museum?
15. Do visitors
like it?
● How much usage do you get on your audio tour?
● What kind of feedback have you received?
16. Different
Learning Styles
● Not every museum visitor learns best by
joining a docent-led museum tour
● Some learn better as individuals, going at
their own pace
26. Smartphone Tour
● Visitor texts a keyword into a
shortcode and is sent a link to
a mobile web site
● The mobile site can hold any
kind of content - Audio,
Video, Forms, Polls, PDFs, etc.
27. Marketing
● Membership sign up - encourage
visitors to sign up for email list or
receive a text with a link to a form
● Promote events or special deals
● Post visit curator auto-calling
29. Development
● Mobile Give - Allow donors to
give in amounts from $5-$25
which is taken directly from their
phone bill
30. Text Chat
● When patrons text in a keyword to a
shortcode, they can opt in to receive text
messages from the museum throughout
the day
● Visitors can also text in questions about
an exhibit or general information about
the the museum
31. Feedback/Survey
● Patrons can call in to an audio
line to leave feedback about
their visit
● If a visitor has opted in for
text messaging during their
visit, you can send them a text
at the end of the day with link
to a mobile survey
32. Scavenger Hunt
● Set up a list of clues (often based on a
particular theme)
● Visitor texts in to receive their first clue and
search around the museum for the answer
● When they text in the answer, they receive
their next clue
34. Augmented Reality
● Augmented Reality is a new
technology which can unlock
hidden content by simply
pointing your cell phone at an
exhibit
● When the cell phone recognizes
the target (exhibit), it reveals a
layer of content which sits on top
of the image
● This content-on-demand can
display video, audio, interactive
timelines, games or animation
38. 2 Platforms
Text Messaging
● Inbound texting
○ Employees text to join a list
● Outbound texting
○ Schedule texts to lists by
calendar date or sequence
Mobile Web Authoring
● Create mobile sites on the fly - feels
like an app but no download
● Store content like videos, Word docs,
Powerpoints, photos, mp3
● Create engagements - quizzes, polls,
leaderboards - fun tasks to keep them
interested
45. Text Messaging Platform
● Inbound texting - employees opt in to the lists
which apply to their job search
● Outbound texting - you push messaging to
people in those lists
● Schedule by calendar date or by sequence (#
days in between messaging)
● Add a “text chat” feature to have one-on-one
discussions
49. Mobile Web Platform
● Design the site to match your branding
● Build the structure - categories and pages (like Windows
Explorer or a table of contents)
● Drag-and-drop icons to build the individual pages - takes
minutes to create an engaging interactive mobile page
● Use text messaging to send the bit.ly link to that specific page
to a specific list
54. Analytics
● Never wonder if job seekers are watching your videos, reading training materials or
taking quizzes. We track everything a person does on the site
● See what time they interacted, what they viewed, how they answered
56. GPS Wayfinding
● Location beacons are placed throughout the grounds of the museum
● Users can open an app to see a map with the markers to guide them from exhibit to exhibit
58. Security
● SECURITY GROUP CHAT - All security personnel can
communicate in the same channel
● SECURITY PICTURE MESSAGING - Text pictures or video,
no more confusion from a bad description
○ Lost child
■ Parents supply picture of child which is sent out
to all team members, along with description of
what the child is wearing that day
○ Suspicious person
■ Officers can send each other pictures or video of
suspicious person so that all team members
know who to look for
59. Onboarding
● New hires and volunteers can
text into a shortcode to be sent a
link to a mobile onboarding page
● Onboarding page can hold
important information on what to
bring their first day, documents,
forms, etc
60. Training
● Store all training and reference material
on a mobile website
● After classes, send small bursts of
information to help
docents/employees retain information
they learned during instruction
