Problem Statement:

The museum experience is often something very personal or shared with a small social circle. Especially in the case of open-roaming museums, where there is no designated path to follow, there is often an opportunity for visitors to generate their own narrative by experiencing different works or displays in different orders. Sharing this personal experience with others that have their own unique experience is often enriching for both parties, expanding their perspective on exhibitions. This is why a simple, museum-specific platform to share personal experiences and routes through a museum would be a very powerful digital tool that allows inspiring dialog among much larger groups of people.

Approach:

MuseRoam would act as a combination of a map tool with annotation capabilities. The app would scrape and organize floor maps of various museums from all over the world and across different concentrations (art, science, history, etc.). Using simple drawing mechanics, users can either draw custom paths through the museum, or use position tracking to have their own experience tracked and projected onto the map in an automated manner. At any point on the path, users can add nodes, which they can annotate with tags, text, hyperlinks, and images. Users can then save their paths, share them with either a select group, or make it open-access to the whole user community.

An additional feature can be integration with museum view capabilities of Google Art to allow “digital tours” for people that aren’t able to visit the museums.

Audience:

The audience for this app would be anyone who is visiting, or wants to visit a museum. Additionally, the app would be a great platform for people that have already toured a museum, and would like a different perspective on things. It would be open access for anyone to contribute routes and experiences, however user ratings, or collaboration with institutions can help create “curated experiences” for people with different expectations from the museum.

Skills Needed:

Visual design skills, experience with mapping, IOS or Android programming, (potentially) work with street/museum view Google APIs.