#museum mobile

[quattro1987]

[quattro1987]

Urquattro und Sportquattro im Museum Mobile, Ingolstadt

[quattro1987]

[quattro1987]

[hariesautomoto]

3=5 by HariesAutoMoto

[kineticmuseums]

"This app combines information from a whole bunch of museums!"

So I just saw yet another presentation from yet another mobile vendor trying to create an app that tries to house collections/event/ticketing data from multiple museums in one place. The pitch is always the same: this app is totally going to take off, and museums need to "be mobile" and we want your museum to get in on the ground floor to take advantage of how awesome this is going to be. Now when people go to City X (usually New York, because sure) they'll have information about every museum at their fingertips! Won't that be great?

Guh.

The path to museum mobile valhalla is littered with these crapety apps. I know why mobile vendors from outside the museum space think this is a good idea--it allows them to build a single app that (supposedly) works for a whole bunch of museums, which makes things easier on both the marketing and development teams than bespoke apps for individual museums does. But damn--vendors have been trying this model now since the iPhone was introduced, and not a single one has taken off. Why keep trying? It doesn't work.

The problem is that the idea is based in total fantasy. One, it assumes that I identify as a cultural tourist to the extent that when I visit a city, I will want an app that restricts information to just cultural properties (and not also, say, restaurants, bookstores, used record stores, etc.) Two, it assumes that even if I am this person (which is incredibly unlikely), I will somehow be aware that this app exists. Which I won't be, unless I'm just hammered relentlessly with marketing messages. And if I'm the kind of cultural tourist you're targeting, I'm also the kind of person that hates that kind of marketing.

I've talked about this before, but y'all vendors have to get it together if you want to work with museums. You need to really work with us to figure out what's needed, rather than simply stepping in, having done zero research, and telling us what we need. We understand this space much more acutely than you think we do.