Museum Apps: How User Interface Can Create a Powerful User Experience
- 2015-07-07
- Huffington Post Arts & Culture
Museums are increasingly introducing new mobile apps. These apps typically focus on the museums' entire collection and enable visitors to browse and obtain information on the works featured in the collection. While such functionality is valuable for both visitors and non-visitors alike, apps have the potential to be not merely descriptive but to transform the overall museum experience. The key factors that make a good museum app are yet to be definitively identified but one can learn from some great examples in practice.
A leader in digital technologies, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has introduced an iPad app for one of the exhibitions currently on view: Creatures of Light: Nature's Bioluminescence. This exhibition, designed and produced by AMNH's award-winning Exhibition Department under the direction of David Harvey, Senior Vice President for Exhibition, focuses on bioluminescence -- i.e., organisms that produce light.