Smartphonic

More than an accessibility app

Something catches a visitor’s curiosity… they go over to investigate… and that’s when Smartphonic comes into play. You can put exciting digital content directly into the hands of visitors at the exact moment that their interest is engaged; performance poetry, games, free downloads, or fun pictures that visitors can tweet from your museum to their friends… It’s about creating meaningful connections between items in a collection and the people and places in your community. 

You don’t need a complicated website for this, and the digital interpretation doesn’t have to be expensive. It costs nothing to link to a video on, say, YouTube – giving a demonstration, providing more insight, offering ways to take part, or simply allowing visitors to experience a new perspective.

At the touch of a button, Smartphonic AXS could transport UK visitors away from a static museum case to an African village where children are playing xylophones; laughing, dancing and engaging with the music in context. Interested? Then follow on through social media and discover a percussion group in your town where people can join in and get involved…

Encourage independent thinking and learning

All these layers of interpretation and activities are organised within the app, which means that your collection can be presented in a thoughtful, uncluttered manner.

Yet, at the same time, those visitors who are interested in finding out more, can follow a trail of carefully curated breadcrumbs that gives them a sense a discovery and offers multiple ways of learning within a single exhibit; endless variety for inquiring minds that have grown up with touch screen devices and are used to flicking between different media. This is not ‘dumbing down’ the interpretation – quite the reverse – it’s encouraging independent thinking and feeding a hunger to learn.

And it’s this ability to provide alternate pathways for individual visitors, without affecting the main interpretation, that makes Smartphonic AXS a wonderful tool for improving accessibility. In addition to having a regular audio tour, you and your volunteers could create audio description, BSL or subtitled videos, for example…