MuseumMobile » Audio tours

Evaluation-led Mobile Experience Design

nancyproctor — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 02:20:06 +0000

At the MCN conference in Portland in November, I presented some of the research I’ve been doing on new approaches to mobile experience design. Sheila Carey from the Canadian Heritage Information Network kindly put together a panel for the conference on “Making the Call: Evaluating Mobile Projects in Museums” that pulled my work together with that of Sherry Hsi, who analyzed with keen hindsight the Exploratorium’s seminal Electronic Guidebook project, and Koven Smith’s latest call to action: don’t pilot – develop! More on that later…

My slides are here; the podcast of the talk is here. If you have comments or ideas to build on this work, there are pages on the Museum Mobile wiki dedicated to the topic:

Audio Tours 101c: Top 10 Tips in under 10 Minutes

nancyproctor — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:06:04 +0000

What are the fundamental issues you need to think about as you design an audio tour? In this third installment in Museum Mobile’s mini-series on audio tour basics, Chris Tellis, co-founder of Antenna Audio, shares best practices gleaned from his nearly three decades of developing audio tours for cultural sites around the world.

In under 10 minutes, hear Chris’s top 10 tips – and add your tips & questions in the comments below!

Talk about the elephant in the room – or the meteor that just hit the Pope;
Choose the most passionate person to narrate the tour;
Structure the tour around key messages and the educational mission: of the museum, the exhibition and the object;
Position the visitor as archaeologist/researcher to make discoveries through the tour;
Forming an opinion is a profound learning experience: don’t be afraid to encourage your visitors to debate with the tour;
Choose the platform last, to suit the story;
Trust your ear (more than the script);
Get the operations right to avoid the glitches becoming the prevailing memory of the tour;
Keep it simple: truly hip technology is technology that works consistently;
Be complementary: the tour can’t compete with the museum or exhibition.

Audio Tours 101: Writing the Rules

nancyproctor — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 22:18:12 +0000

This week kicks off a mini-series of podcasts on the basics of audio tours: their history and fundamental principles; the role of technology and theatricality in their evolution; the primacy of the story and the question of who gets to tell it.

In this first podcast, Chris Hardman, founder and Artistic Director of Antenna Theater, which became the global audio tour company, Antenna Audio, talks about ‘writing the rules’ of audio tour creation with David Torgersen, the senior sound designer for Antenna Theater for 15 years and producer of more than 300 audio tours around the world.

Stay tuned to hear about the pros and cons of linear versus random access technology, the impact of new 21st century platforms on audio tour content design and use, and the emerging role of ‘citizen curators’ as the world becomes “an audio tour waiting to happen.”