Old Masters at your fingertips: the journey of creating a museum app for the iPhone & iTouch.
Elena Lagoudi, The National Gallery, United Kingdom
Charlotte Sexton, The National Gallery, United Kingdom
http://www.discoverpentimento.com/
The National Gallery in partnership with Antenna Audio has developed the world’s first museum downloadable application for iPhone and iTouch mobile devices. Designed to appeal to art enthusiasts and fans of the Gallery, LoveArt was the first of its kind to be released by a major gallery. This application enables users to take a mini tour of the Gallery anywhere in the world.
This paper follows the journey of making the application: the lessons learned in the process of developing the application; the links to the Gallery's brand; IPR issues; the process of selecting content to publish according to the medium and the audience; and exploitation of the interface capabilities. We discuss how it forms part of a wider family of interpretative content on offer: podcasts, audio guides and mobile phone tours; and how a “holistic” strategy and a flexible business model made this possible. We also discuss how we approach evaluation and measuring success, and what we know about the audience. Finally, we reflect on what we could do better next time and how creative collaborations support innovation and originality.
Session: Mobiles: A Panel [mobile]
Keywords: application, iPhone, iTouch, mobile phones, collection, downloadable
