Mobile culture: innovating the audience experience, not the technology

Guardian Professional June 7, 2013 Most museums have already embraced mobile, and they are thinking about it in more sophisticated and strategic ways.
Last week, this network published an open letter from Fusion Analytics calling for museums to do more to embrace mobile. It caused quite a stir among museum professionals. Whilst some responded favourably, many asked who these people were to patronise us, telling us what we already knew, and the Twitter discussion demonstrated that the issue was by no means as simple as had been portrayed.

A few months ago we set up Mobile Experiences: Cultural Audiences (ME:CA) because we wanted to directly address some of this thinking. We wanted to get away from a focus on technology and avoid a knee-jerk and panicked reaction to growing smartphone use.

Instead we thought it was time to have more considered, evidence-based conversations about mobile that concentrated on the audience experience. As part of our first workshop, we invited 20 cultural professionals to discuss what they felt were the exciting opportunities for developing mobile experiences and what were the challenges. The results were telling.

In our discussions, the possibilities afforded by the amazing capabilities of smartphones were clear. Not only can they deliver more information to the user, but they can also be playful, social, locative and therefore potentially create powerful experiences. Read more