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The Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery iPhone app
Why is this case study relevant?
The Hunterian iPhone app is an example of a university museum accessing academic and support services to work together to achieve a shared benefit. It produced a new visitor attraction tool which enhanced the user experience and provided access to the collections in a new way. It also provided an opportunity to explore new mobile technology and its potential. Digital Projects Officer Ger Malcolm describes how the project came about.
What were the aims of the project?
In short, we wanted to fit a museum – or at least a visit to a museum – in a pocket. We wanted to keep visitors interested, to let them know we still had a pulse whilst all this renovation work was being carried out. We needed to allow the public access in some way to the fascinating collections that are usually on display.
Our objectives were:
• To generate user traffic to the Hunterian website whilst the roof was being replaced on the museum (Significant part of display closed for at least 1 year)
• To explore the possibilities of new technology, test the resources required and evaluate the results
• To provide a student placement, so that student, supervisor and University could benefit from the experience
What happened?
‘The Hunterian – 12 star objects’ is a brand new application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, developed by Ger Malcolm (Digital Projects Officer) and Suhayb Amir Mahmood (Electronics & Software Engineering student).
Over a ten week period during the summer of 2009 we devised, built and submitted the application to Apple. Two weeks later the free app was approved and sitting on the iTunes store.
The application invites you to explore 12 star objects from the extensive and wide ranging collections at the Hunterian and contains many links to further materials online, updates on permanent displays, exhibitions and notice of our lunchtime talks. Highly recommended for those who are wishing to visit The Hunterian and anyone interested in the man himself, Dr. William Hunter.
Students on the University’s MSc IT course must successfully complete a challenging and substantial three month computing project as part of their final year. Suhayb had no prior experience of the development tools – Xcode, (Objective C) – or the Mac platform. He spent the first two weeks of the ten-week placement getting acquainted with this new environment whilst I got my head around what we were trying to do exactly, creating a design brief and a project plan. We then started to locate content. Difficulties crept into the project early on as a new version of Xcode was released and no documentation was yet published. Fortunately Suhayb had a great work ethic and applied himself to a mountain of online reading; blogs, podcasts and websites.
This link will start iTunes and connect you with the iTunes store where you can download the app and sync it with your iPhone/iPod. Enjoy!
What was learned?
Monitoring the feedback, download stats and reading the report from the student, it became clear that knowledge had been transferred both ways. It was difficult to see a negative side to the whole experience, not that we were looking for one, but it’s rare to get such a win-win result. The student was so eager to learn and so excited by the possibilities that this fed back into the project generating more effort and ideas.
Looking back I would be tempted to say that it really could have done with better planning beforehand, so that we could have been resourced and ready to run from day one. Then again, had I known just how much work was involved, I might have been more wary of starting it. We also learned how important testing was to such a technical project. We had discovered many cases of apps being refused publication on the Apple App Store due to bugs. So, Suhayb set himself a rigorous task of de-bugging everything, all the time, as we progressed. This methodology worked, as had he not done that, the app would have been refused by Apple Computer Inc, sent back to us for further development, and we would have run out of time to complete it.
Technology has a place in museums. It can enhance the user experience in a virtual way, it can substitute when needed but it’s a long way off from replacing an actual visit. This app generates a bit of a buzz and creates more interest in our collections, and it is this aspect that moves us onto our next idea – a virtual guide app, using your own phone, in a language of your choosing.
What is the wider relevance?
This project shows how a museum can make use of cutting-edge technology to engage new users with the collection. For the museum creating an app such as this allows access to a wider set of visitors. Although it is possible to make a virtual visit via the website, the app takes this one step further using mobile technology. Much of the interactivity involved in the app is no longer dependent on browser type, plug-ins, internet connection or download speeds. This allows for a unique first-hand experience that has become a new doorway to the website.
Most of the app users are new to the Hunterian, and stats show users from more than 50 different countries. To date they have had more than 2,000 downloads; that means 2,000 people around the world who might not visit the museum otherwise. Perhaps the app will also encourage them to visit the actual museum when in Glasgow.
How was this project promoted?
Naturally, word of mouth is the best promotion for this type of product. If you can get a user to recommend it through a social network then it pretty much takes off. That said, word of mouth can also have a detrimental effect if your app is bug-ridden or just not appealing.
We decided to create a short video clip that would advertise its availability and quickly show users how to use it. News of the app and videoclip was posted on Twitter, Facebook, internal systems and YouTube. A press release was issued and articles published in a range of university publications, including the internal staff magazine and the externally-issued graduate magazine with is sent to 120,000 Alumni worldwide.
Essentially, the museum used relevant means to promote the app to the target audience – in this case their social media channels.
What type of evaluation was done?
Having an Apple iPhone Developer Program License allows you access to the iTunes range of online tools, to manage your apps. One helpful section of this is ‘Sales & Trends’ where you can view transaction reports by day, week or month. The data given shows the number of downloads by country, currency and units for each app developed. Through iTunes you can see customer feedback, and any star ratings can given. As much of the app directs users to our online materials we also decided to monitor how users accessed our website. Using Google analytics we gradually developed a picture of the pages these users visited, how long they stayed on a page and where they went next. We can see peaks of downloads and traffic when university publications are released that include an article on the app. This evaluation is ongoing.
Associated Images
Category
ICT/Digital
Project Start
1st Jun 2009
Project End
1st Sep 2009
Published
15th Mar 2010
Who Led?
University of Glasgow
Who Paid?
University of Glasgow Dept of Computing Science