Museum Practice

Whilst they have a 'being cool' factor, mobile apps are perhaps overrated; a bit like social media, dare I say. There's really no concrete evidence of such apps enhancing visitor experience - it just an additional means of communication and marketing. There are still, and probably always will be, better ways to engage the audience that really matters.

Apps for phones might be a future, but they're not the only one. Apps for iphones, or android phones, only provide content for specific users who already own hi-end technology. In a world where museums are often accused of being 'elitist', we need to be careful of offering a method of interaction that is only available to a small and well-off section of our users.

The idea of being able to offer museum engagement that can be carried around in your pocket is great, but we need to make sure that we really are engaging all our users, not just excluding a large proportion of them.

An app is only as good as its content. Apps that enhance the museum experience have real value, but like museum use of social networking tools, there will be museums who jump on the bandwagon without any intellectual reasoning or assessment of purpose.