National Galleries of Scotland: Impressionist Gardens

A SURPRISINGLY LOVELY APP – PROOF THAT YOU DON’T NEED TO BE AN EXPERT TO PRODUCE AN EXPERT APP

I was really excited to learn about the National Galleries of Scotland’s iPhone app for the “Impressionist Gardens” show, on view 31 July to 17 October, 2010. Not because I particularly like Impressionist art or want to know more about French landscape painting, but because I’ve had a soft spot for the Museum since the lovely James Robertson took me there for a Manet exhibition in 2003  (oh, what a night).

But I was also a bit anxious about what I would find. I’m not sure why, possibly (probably) American arrogance and our unjustified sense that few people outside San Francisco, New York and London can produce anything worthy of note in this mobile world. Whilst I was rooting for something cool, I didn’t expect much from an app by a Scottish museum, designed by a Scottish digital team (Not that there’s anything wrong with Scotland, just that we Americans can be pretty high on ourselves).

But that was a wrong assumption. This is a delightful app, which is well  designed from a user perspective and has a ton of interesting and educational content. The audio interpretation is a bit lackluster but the app design and overall experience were satiating for an armchair visitor like me – going to  Edinburgh from my living room in SF.

What’s cool and not so cool?

Let’s start with the home page and navigation. All very intuitive, all very simple. I get how to use it in a split second. I get to the content I’m interested in with one, two or three taps. There’s no ambiguity here, no voyages to nowhere. What you see is what you get (there’s an acronym for that, no?) Nice work!

“The Show” is a text overview of (amazingly) the show, with a nice video intro from some lovely gentlemen with lovely Scottish accents to whom we are latterly introduced (squarely in the “What isn’t so cool?” camp) but which outlines the curatorial perspective on the exhibition in a comprehensive, academic and sometimes engaging way with video footage and context-enhancing images. And I mean, how can you resist a Scotsman saying “exotic succulents”?

If I were IN the museum, I might find these 3 minutes and 26 seconds a bit long while I’m raring to get exploring, but at home across our proverbial pond and then some, I was relaxed and got into it.

“Share” opens up a pre-scripted email that’s a little bit lame but which you can edit, so no harm done.  No tweeting or FB-ing from this app so far as I can see. Seems like a missing gimme.

“Visitor Info” has your bog standard visitor info with a link to the National Galleries’ ticketing website, which opens a web browser. Go back to the app and you’re back at the start. Not great but workable.

Under “Art” you’ve got three choices: List (a text list of artworks in the exhibition with text, audio or video interpretation) and Media (an image driven list of works with simple icons indicating either audio or video for a particular artwork).

I thought maybe one menu would be enough. Perhaps titled “list” with images and their accompanying media icons. Two choices seemed redundant when the resulting content is exactly the same – catering to different types of user? maybe.

And then there’s “Map”, which either I didn’t get at all, or is ephemera in an otherwise tightly designed app. Its not a map of the museum, that’s for sure.

I can’t really comment on “Guide” since I was not in the museum using the keypad, but it was great to see a keypad and the results screens worked well. There is text and sometimes audio or video for a reasonable number of works and I can see that this interface (although a bit awkward to look at) could be exactly the right thing to have on hand on-site.

“Events” is a bit of a hodge-podge listing of everything going on under the sun. Perhaps categories like exhibitions, lectures, films etc would be more effective in helping us sort through the available options.

Content in Ecru
The interpretive content in this app was a bit stolid. I liked the multiple voices, although I was never properly introduced to the narrators. I liked the sound design, particularly the invocation of the outdoors: buzzing and alive. And from an amateur’s perspective, it appeared authoritative, intimate and offered-up by real people with real opinions. But who are they? and could they perhaps talk a little bit more to each other and opine a little bit less? The overall tone seemed a bit old school and tell-em-like-it-is-ish rather than the more conversational and collaborative sharing-ness we’ve come to expect in the past, oh, 18 months.

A terrific exhibition for the non-visitor
But overall, the app delights. How often can you get this close to an exhibition, this easily, from 10,000 miles away? I feel like I’ve been to Impressionist Gardens, toured the exhibition and got to that point of ‘yeah, I’ve seen enough, where’s the cafe’? Not necessarily what the Museum was hoping for in launching this app, even if they didn’t expect their biggest fans to be people who never visited.