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Web and mobile

We review the latest websites and apps
Nicola Sullivan
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App
Tower Bridge exhibition
It's child's play, says Nicola Sullivan

This app’s primary aim is not to be informative, but to encourage users to interact with the exhibition spaces as they move through London’s Tower Bridge. This is achieved by a series of simple games – a suitable format for children aged between five and 10, the audience that this app is designed for.

Matching up the iconic buildings along London’s skyline and blowing into the end of the phone to move a boat along the river are among the more memorable games that can be played during the first half of the exhibition.

Disappointingly, the feature that enables users to summon a ship onto the river below by holding the phone above one of the bridge’s glass floors is only accessible by downloading another app. However, there are plans to integrate the two in the future.

But the app really comes into its own when used in the engine rooms, which used to lift the bridge with steam and water-pressured power. Engine room games incorporate virtually shovelling coal into the boilers, oiling machinery and fixing the engines with an array of tools. They are all great ways to engage children with the site, and until this point these historical links had been missing.  

What I really like about the app is that text is kept to a minimum and for the most part instructions are clearly articulated using “find”, “move” or “tap” icons. In fact, museums developing apps for older audiences could learn a lot from the user-friendly design and simplicity.

App
Google Arts and Culture
Street art

This app is an important part of overall efforts to create a more consistent, streamlined experience for visitors and will be updated to reflect new developments in this area.

This newly revised version of the app, which allows users to explore artworks and artefacts from more than 1,000 museums, includes virtual reality tours and an art recognition feature.

By slotting their phone into a virtual reality (VR) viewer such as Google Cardboard, people can use the app to take a virtual tour of a street in Rome or step inside the work of a street artist. I chose to look around the ancient Greek Temple of Zeus in Athens. Unfortunately, I didn’t have access to a VR viewer but I was impressed with the quality of the images and zoom capabilities.

There are also street-view tours available, where users can move through the exhibit or heritage site in the same way they would if they were using Google Maps’ Street View.

Another clever, but to date limited, addition is the Art Recogniser, which is available at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. By pointing your phone’s camera towards a painting on display you can summon up detailed information about the work in front of you.
 
A unique feature on this app, available for iOS and Android, is its search function, which is wonderfully broad. Users can run searches for specific items, scroll through art by time or browse by colour.

Website
Museum of London
A superb resource

The Museum of London’s website, launched in the spring, is structured according to a historical timeline. A revolving carousel takes users through a series of memorably named time zones, and clicking on each of the sections reveals related items and activities in the museum’s galleries.

This intuitive and fantastically executed design, with engaging and informative captions, means that users have a clear overview of the city’s history – an excellent starting point for further exploration.

The “Not to be missed on your visit” slideshows reveal huge high-quality images of the museum’s highlights, such as a neolithic mace head found in the Thames, a barrel on wheels with a central pump that served as a fire engine after the Great Fire in 1666, and the London 2012 Olympic cauldron.

There are also a number of features that break down barriers between the museum and its visitors. I particularly enjoyed the quirky facts about London on each landing page for each of the different time zones.
 
Another excellent feature of this website is the Discover page, where curators and other experts share their stories and perspectives to inspire visitors.


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