The document discusses how beacons can enhance the museum experience by providing contextual information, facilitating social media outreach, and gathering visitor data. It details the components of beacon technology, considerations for deployment, and successful case studies from museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Grand Rapids Public Museum. Additionally, it highlights important factors such as installation, management, security, and the expected user experience.

1. How Beacons can add
Interactivity to Museums
Ravi Pratap
Co-founder & CTO
MobStac
Beaconstac Webinar
Al Juarez
VP – Sales & Marketing
GeLo

2. Today’s webinar
1. What is iBeacon technology?
2. How beacons can enhance the museum experience
1. Museum use cases
1. Things to consider before deploying beacons
1. Learning from successful museum deployments

3. What are beacons?
• Low-cost, low-power transmitters equipped with Bluetooth Low Energy or BLE
(also called Bluetooth 4.0 or Bluetooth Smart)
• Helps mobile devices detect proximity and determine micro-location

4. How beacons work
Beacons don’t transmit content; they transmit a series of numbers
• The transmitted signal allows another device to identify it and determine the
device’s proximity to the beacon

5. How beacons can enhance museum experiences
Deliver
contextual
information
Social
media
outreach
Enhance
Interactivity
beyond audio
Gather
behavioral
data

6. Gather visitor
data
Putting beacons to use in museums
Ticketless
entry
Information
about facilities
available
Recommend
exhibits
Upsell mementos,
gifts from the
souvenir shop

7. 1. Beacon installation
o Purchase beacons - consider color, design, power options
o Configure - ‘major’ and ‘minor’ numbers
o Placement - must be unobtrusive
1. Visitor position not really precise
o Factor in beacon signal interference
o Use proximity, instead of a precise set of coordinates
Things to keep in mind

8. 3. Management and monitoring
o Track data coming from multiple beacons
o Monitor beacons for battery life and last ping time
o Consider using a beacon platform
4. Security
o Change major/minor numbers frequently and encrypt them
o Detect unauthorized authentication attempts
o Set up a mechanism that sends timely firmware updates and
security notifications
Things to keep in mind (contd.)

9. How we helped a museum pilot beacons - 1
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
Adding beacons using the
Beaconstac CMS

10. How we helped a museum pilot beacons - 2
Compose Rules
Set Actions

11. How we helped a museum pilot beacons - 3
Proximity based information-trigger

12. • UX – What experience are you trying to create?
• Density and spacing of beacons
• Trigger spot vs. Beacon location
• Start small
Considerations in real world deployment

13. Grand Rapids Public Museum - Collect A-Z Scavenger
Hunt
Success stories of beacons in museums

14. ArtPrize - Site:Lab at The Morton House
Success stories of beacons in museums

15. About GeLo
GeLo has helped museums become more interactive through the use of GeLo
Bluetooth Smart beacons. GeLo has worked with the Grand Rapids Public
Museum, ArtPrize 2013 and ArtPrize 2014 using beacon technology to share
additional content with museum visitors and art lovers in the digital age.

16. Beaconstac Eddystone Platform
• UNLIMITED user interactions
• Integrated with Google Analytics
• Rules-based rotating URLs
• Custom Domain
• Customer Support

17. Questions?