Going to one of the many Smithsonian museums is one of the most culturally enriching, informative and entertaining activities one can do in DC. The talented marketing and technology professionals at the institution have been creating mobile-centered technologies to spread the word about the many cultural events at the museums, and also to engage the frequenters to the museums while they’re there. After attending the November 9, 2011 DCWEEK event, Smithsonian Mobile Strategy and Initiatives Team, I learned quite a bit about how an institution focused on preserving the treasures of the past are leveraging modern technologies, especially real-time-focused tools (like tweets, blogs and mobile apps) to better engage their visitors. This blurb on the post about the DCWeek event had initially caught my attention: “Museum visitors are often carrying a smartphone, and this brings complex questions of copyright, access and rapidly evolving technologies. While the size and scope of the Smithsonian Institution can be daunting, we look for creative ways to use digital tools to both extend research capabilities, and to bring meaningful visitor engagement across all ages, interests and backgrounds. It’s an exciting time for museums, and we are happy to invite DCWEEK participants into the discussion.”
Dr. Nancy Proctor, Head of Mobile Strategy & Initiatives at Smithsonian Institution, started the session by sharing that over 12,000 people work at Smithsonian institutions, half of them being volunteers. The main goal is to expand involvement beyond the Washington, DC area.
The museums mostly focus on citizen science and citizen engagement. To engage people nowadays, Dr. Proctor expressed a need for the development of products both to use by individuals on their own mobile devices while at the Smithsonian, as well as on specific Smithsonian-owned devices available for use while touring the museum. Ultimately, she stated, “the goal is to get people involved as stakeholders in the future of the Smithsonian Institutes.”
These apps would help individuals utilize social media to enhance the museum experience, in addition to providing other useful functions like interactive audio tours, geolocation (historic photos can be attached to the place where they were originally shot decades ago), online collection searches, tools to help visitors navigate the museums, as well as interactive maps and Google directions to the different facilities. Dr. Proctor pointed us to her Slide Share account, which includes a lot of helpful information about the vision of using mobile to transition “from headphones to microphones.” In other words, she would like to encourage more civic engagement: instead of “we [the musuems] do the talking”, it’s “we help you do the talking.” Along these same lines, Sarah T. Sulick, while demonstrating different apps, noted that oftentimes, visitors are experts on different topics and may share expertise by being able to comment on different exhibits, and the comments remain beyond the visit for future visitors to benefit from as well.
To Proctor, “mobile” is equivalent with “social media”. Beyond tours and maps, the goal of apps is to promote interactivity and crowd-sourced quality information. In terms of standards of utility and usability, she specified that products must be accessible and must also be sustainable via future commercialization prospects or other means, and she commented that oftentimes, applications are open-source, and often become available to other museums and institutions.
For some of the currently available mobile applications and mobile websites, check out the Smithsonian Social Media website. One recently completed project is Museums on Main Street’s Stories From Main Street, which was presented by Robbie Davis at the event. This project is unique because it directly requests civic engagement and documents individuals’ stories about their unique experiences in America’s small and rural communities. Individuals can share photographs, recordings and videos via the mobile app – a collaborative effort to showcase the uniqueness that characterizes each American town. This is an ideal example of how the museums are heading towards a distributed network model, rather than central-node type of model as has typically been done in the past.
Another interesting technology showcased at the event is 3D modeling of artifacts using scanners (like CT scanners) in combination with 3D printers to replicate artifact objects, resulting in replicas that visitors can access, in maintaining with the theme of a two-way interactive experience.
Below are some photos of the different speakers.
