In Praise of the Humble Audio Guide

With every museum, gallery and cultural site on the planet falling over itself to introduce a smartphone app, the traditional audio tour has come to signify a kind of luddite-ism or living in the past.

But audio tours, which have been developed and refined over decades of user testing, feedback and innovation, remain the most effective way for museums to educate, inspire and entertain their visitors about their collections and/or special exhibitions with a mobile guide .

In his NYTimes Critic’s Notebook article on October 1st, Edward Rothstein singles out the problem:

“The MoMA app, for example…does not do much more than its audio-guide system. It lets you find objects by floor, gallery or exhibition. But only a few objects get close attention — primarily the ones already singled out for the museum’s audio tour. You can’t navigate well around the galleries because the app does not register your location…And the preset tours, like the one I sampled of the Matisse exhibition, are far more distracting with the iPhone than with the museum’s more straightforward audio-tour equipment.

Moreover, apart from the audio itself, information is slight and availability inconsistent. Search for works by Warhol: some have almost no commentary; others offer excerpts from a book; others link to audio commentary. The app never got easier to use; it remained fussy and interfering. It was a relief to turn it off.”

In 10 years in the audio tour business, I never once heard a visitor or a reviewer say that it was a relief to turn it off.  In fact, I never heard anyone say it was anything other than a positive or neutral experience. That’s the way it should be, right?

So why haven’t museum apps delivered the kind of meaningful experiences that their precursors did, and still do? It seems to be a combination of things:

1.     the internal museum teams responsible for museum apps tend to be more tech/feature focused than content/experience focused
2.     museum teams responsible for apps have not adopted the concept that content and the content/in-museum experience is primary, and
3.     too many museum professionals are looking for their 15 minutes of fame

What’s so bad about being “clunky” and “outdated” if visitors dig it?
Read any review of a museum app and you’ll find these adjectives leveled at audio guides: clunky, outdated, outmoded, analog, first generation, “going the way of the dinosaur” (that’s probably not an adjective…), old school, pre-recorded, un-connected, disconnected…

It seems unfashionable to even consider an audio guide these days, which is a great shame for museum-goers since longstanding market leaders like Antenna Audio and ESPRO/Acoustiguide continue to churn out entertaining, inspirational content that connects visitors to the things they find interesting in the simplest and most meaningful ways. So what if its not delivered on the trendiest device? If visitors love it then shouldn’t we keep giving it to them?

The few museums and cultural sites that are creating terrific content experiences in their apps without these market brands are typically doing it with ex-employee consultants of these brands, such as SFMOMA and Earprint (although @PeterSamis is really in a league of his own), and a number of London museums with Simply Green+Webb. London-based start-up Imagineear, founded by ex-Antennas Andrew Nugee and Ziv Kushnir, and the incredible content producer Eleonore Heijbore are iterating new business models with traditional audio. And ex-Antenna, @NancyProctor, is a thought leader in the space and heads up the Smithsonian’s mobile initiatives. These clunky, outdated audio guide folks know what they’re doing. And they keep doing it well.

But the traditional audio tour companies have failed to introduce the kind of sexy, newsworthy, digital-native kind of solutions that museums want, which seems to be why they’re faring so poorly in comparison to shops like Toura, Spotlight Mobile, NOUS and others, at least in the press.

“I’d like to have the hottest thing in Christendom, thanks”
Ten, or even five years ago, the museum peeps who were responsible for mobile interpretation were mostly educators. Sometimes the museum director was directly involved and sometimes the curators were involved. Well, curators were always involved but not always directly. Today, web teams, tech teams, interactive learning teams, IT teams and marketing teams seem to be leading the drive.

That’s cool for bringing in new ideas and technical knowledge to reach new audiences and expand the educational mission…. But it seems to have created a prevailing interest in that which is technically sexy and a prevailing disinterest in that which has been done before. Apps are being introduced with little or no real content, and which serve to demonstrate that the museum is hip and trendy but offer very little else to those museumgoers who want deeper insights and learning experiences.

Some museums have some very hot things – foursquare checkins with discounts, mapping and locationing, social media updates, “likes” and so on. But none of them have really changed the language yet. None has delivered a seachange in musueum interpretation. And none so far, other than perhaps SFMOMA and MoMA (notwithstanding Ed Rothstein’s review) have delivered an enhancement to the ‘clunky’, ‘outdated’ audio tour experience.

Content reigns over features
Its pretty cool that I can tweet, FB, digg and other stuff from a museum app – let my friends know what I’m doing and what I like. Its really cool that I can see where I am on a map and get good instructions about going to the next place.

But honestly, does it really enhance my museum visit that much? What really enhances my museum visit is that I can easily access content about the objects  I’m interested in, or find the kinds of things I’d like. Even if I’m used to being dragged around by an audio guide/tour or if I’m part of the “me” generation, I still want to know something about what I’m looking at right now. Cos that’s why I came here. To learn something, to be inspired, to find a deeper connection or meaning in something. I’m interested in what I’m doing, not what is happening.

So yes, I’d like a bit more content. And museum apps are short on that. The audio guide for any museum gives you a ton of content and a ton of random access choices, so what I listen to is all up to me. Even if I have to press a number to get that content. At least I’ll know its relevant to what I’m looking at.

“I want to get the press that the Design Museum got”
Six months ago, a NY museum director told me that she wanted the kind of press that the Design Museum got for its app. She didn’t know what she wanted in her museum app, she hadn’t used the Design Museum’s app (which was not ou la la, the greatest) but she wanted the press.

It feels like too many museum professionals want the PR that comes with a smartphone app, and too few have really thought through what they want to offer their visitors through that kind of app. Audio guides are boring. Noone will write a story about a new audio tour, especially if its not also available on iPhone and Android. But that doesn’t change a single thing about the visitor experience. And I hope that’s what museums care most about.

So give a shout out and an #FF to the humble audio tour…
At the end of the day, its about what I feel, see and learn when its me and the artwork face to face. If I have to spend more time fiddling with an app than looking at the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, then something is wrong.  And if I’m reading on a tiny screen more than I’m looking at what I came to look at? well, that ain’t right either.

And thats what’s so nice about audio guides. For the most part, when they do it well, the people who make them and the museum folks who are responsible for them know that. They construct tours that allow me to explore, they give me insights, they let me hear from the most interesting sources. They make my museum experience better, they don’t complicate it or make it super-trendy but empty. They’re where I’m at. They focus on content. They focus on my experience. And that’s why I still like audio guides 9 times out of 10 over today’s smartphone apps. Even if it makes me look like I’m behind the times.