The document discusses mobile experiments at the Powerhouse Museum led by Sebastian Chan, focusing on engaging key audiences such as children, families, and culturally active adults. It outlines essential rules for museum content, visitor behaviors, and critiques current mobile technologies such as QR codes and augmented reality, emphasizing their limitations in enhancing user interactions. The presentation concludes with a call for innovation in museum technologies while providing several online resources for further exploration.

1. mobile experiments at the powerhouse museum
sebastian chan, head of digital, social & emerging technologies, powerhouse museum
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

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4. some key audiences:
children & familes
under 30s
culturally active adults
education - primary, secondary, tertiary
makers, tinkerers, creators, designers
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

5. 5 rules of museum content
findable - it is where i am and where i look
meaningful - i can understand it
responsive - to my interests, moods, location
usable/shareable - i can pass it on and share
available online, onsite and o site
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

6. mobile figures:
2% of Sydney tra c is on a mobile device
85% from iPhone OS
37.4% Optus, 19.2% Vodafone, 12.3% Telstra
half the time on site compared to others
30% less likely to arrive via search
slightly more detail at http://from.ph/6f
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

7. the visitor cycle
revisitation
pre during post
www in gallery out in the world
handheld AR/mobile
www
highly social didactic highly social
visitor-led controlled visitor-led
10% 1%
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8. inside the museum
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10. distracts from interaction with the museum
itself
gets in the way of social interactions
outdated and costly for both museums and
visitors
tend to be extremely linear
source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gingerblokey/3088411957/
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

11. visual/aesthetic issues when deployed in
quantity
requires user to find and use an app to scan
di cult to scan reliably in mixed light gallery
conditions
few positive social associations with QR codes
more detail at http://from.ph/qr2009
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

12. too subtle to trigger visitor action
requires familiarity with using URLs on mobiles
scales well with existing site
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

13. more social than smaller device
can integrate with existing content
existing content and assets will work
custom app or html5?
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

14. outside the museum
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22. early days of augmented reality
no real compelling use cases
currently quite clunky and gimmicky
have released dataset - http://from.ph/download
Tuesday, 22 June 2010

23. thank you.
sebastian chan
head of digital, social and emerging technologies
powerhouse museum
sydney, australia
sebc@phm.gov.au | @sebchan
Fresh + New: museum technologies blog
www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog
Tuesday, 22 June 2010