Research on Mobile Museum Content

Research into museum use of mobile applications and online databases is going well. Some of the results are quite surprising and not what one would initially expect. One of the big gripes about a large shared service like the app I am proposing is getting various institutions working together on it.

Results from the 2012 Museum Associations survey at this link however show that 63% of organizations surveyed feel that partnering with other institutions would be a good way to get over issues of funding and designing such content. If a group of midsize museums were interested in pooling some resources, the project becomes quite viable.

Some more interesting results, as far as visitors go, can be found at this link. Around 50% of museum visitors visit the institutions website first to plan their visit, however those results are skewed towards adults. Younger visitors are more  likely to just show up in the area or the museum and then rely on their mobile devices to get any more information they need on the fly. The same survey shows that, again surprisingly, visitor interest in using mobile tours is not age centric. People of all ages are balanced with about a 45% ratio of visitors wanting to have some sort of audio or application tour to help them learn more.

Overall, research is going great and the results point towards the future growth being spot on for projects like this. Within the near future the growth of interactive learning tours will increase, and they will evolve away from simple audio tours and borrowed devices to users accessing whatever they please from their own hardware.