Mobile Sites and Web Apps for Museums

Posted on 11 March 2010 | 1 Comment

Vincent Roman: Here are a bunch of different reasons why I think developing Web Apps for visitors is by are a superior model and strategy for museums in the long run:

• Maximum Accessibility & iPad Ready! – No stone unturned in ensuring that each and every visitor has full access to the same information.  Saves the need to special case for devices and provides a breadth of service.  The best thing about this is that you are now officially iPad ready if you have developed a web app.  No ifs, buts or maybes about it.
• Seamless Development – The fact that you are simply developing another web service means that, as a development team, you don’t need to add any new dimensions.  You can carry on developing within the structure of the existing web site.
• Development Costs – Because are developing for a platform which your existing development team are 90% familiar with you can ring fence and reduce the potential costs.  iPhone development would be much more costly and less penetrative in terms of ROI.
• Open Source – There is so much prior art in the field of web apps the ability to get from 0-60 mph in no time is exceedingly easy.  This helps with reduction fo dev time and costs.  It also means that museums can more readily share their experiences and though their sites can share a common structure, they don’t need to all be the same.
• Flash-Content – You can use flash as desired.  Sure it won’t work on iPhone etc, but you can easily take care of alternate content in these cases, as you would on any setup where you miss flash.
• Niche Sites & Testing Ideas - Due to the fact that rollout time and cost can be kept to a minimum, as well as the fact that barriers to entry are low, it is super easy to create new content for specific exhibitions or tie ups that a museum does.  Testing ideas is also a lot easy before full roll out, which ties in nicely with Jim Richardson’s beta museum.
• iPhone Interface – Despite building a web app, you can still create a standard iPhone like interface to your web app, using whatever graphics and combining them with JS.  Libraries are being built that will make this task a whole lot easier.
• Reliance on 3rd Party – Part of the issue I have with iPhone Apps is the reliance on the App Store, in the same way of rolling out an Air App you rely on getting a certificate for it.  Developing a browser friendly web app cuts out this “unknown” from the equation.  I suppose it is possible, being a cultural institution that the App Store might fast track your app approval, but this isn’t something one can expect, rely on, or anything else.
• API / Web Services – Any API structure you create to service your web app can easily be opened up and made public so that other people can do cool things with the data on their own web sites.

Read more: http://www.vincentroman.com/blog/mobile-sites-web-apps-for-museums/

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