'It's already happening,' says Barney Grenfell, walking past the frogs and ravenous insects in the At-Bristol science and exploration centre where he works as an education coordinator. 'There'll be a group of teenagers and when they see the live animals, the phones come out and they're all taking pictures.'
At-Bristol is one of several museums in the UK that have successfully tested personal digital assistants (PDAs), which are linked into a wireless network to provide visitors with multimedia content on the exhibits. At-Bristol's content includes videos, games and quizzes.
The next step is to let visitors download content directly to the mobile phone they bring with them. 'The technology's already there,' Grenfell says. 'It's just a question of making it a bit more compact and user-friendly.'
Grenfell is not the only museum professional to be aware of the potential sitting in visitors' pockets. Museums that are able to tap into people's mobiles wouldn't experience the same logistical problems they do in hiring out PDAs - At-Bristol currently has about 15, which take six hours to charge for two hours of use, limiting the number of school groups that can have them in a day.
'There has been increasing interest in mobile phones recently,' says Mimia Margiotta, the interpretation consultant for Hypertag, the Cambridge-based company behind the Magus Guide, the interactive visitor interpretation system used at At-Bristol and elsewhere (see box, p31). The Magus Guide uses tags on exhibits to activate content either stored locally on PDAs or remotely over a wireless network installed in the site.
'Currently there are limitations as far as mobile phones are concerned, mainly because of the screen size,' Margiotta says. 'Images and text would not look as clear as they would on the bigger screens that PDAs have.'
Another problem with using mobiles is that the content generally downloads quite slowly, as it is transferred to the mobile phone through a wireless WAP network, which is not always reliable in buildings. Not all visitors have Java MIDP2 mobile phones, the only type hi-tech enough to download the Java applications that provide the visual, audio and text information on At-Bristol's PDAs.
'At the moment even someone with the latest Java phone would experience limitations,' says Margiotta. 'And downloading information would cost visitors money.'
But even if there are difficulties at the moment, the future looks bright for mobiles in museums. Mike Sharples, the director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, sheds some light on the way things are going.
'PDAs and mobile phones are converging,' he says.
The advantage of the PDA systems is that client software can be pre-loaded onto the devices handed out by the museum, according to Sharples. At the moment, even someone with a Java-enabled phone would have to download software to it in order to use it to get content from a museum's wireless network.
'Mobile phones rely on either SMS messaging, which is restricted to text, or web browsers or Flash players, which aren't available on all phones,' Sharples explains. 'And neither offers automatic location-based delivery of content.'
But new technology to enhance handheld devices - such as ultrasound positioning devices, software to download content automatically and devices with global positioning for outside exhibitions - is constantly being developed.
The trials of PDAs, meanwhile, give encouraging signs of what handheld devices can do for a museum. 'No site felt it was counter-productive - they felt it enhanced what they were doing,' says Will Pearson, the learning programme manager at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), referring to trials of PDA guide systems funded by Nesta in four organisations (the National Space Centre, the Fitzwilliam Museum, At-Bristol and the Royal Institution of Great Britain).
Problems cited in feedback related to the process of instructing people how to use the devices - something that children and young people find much easier than older visitors.
'We launched people a bit too much in the deep end,' says Olympia Brown, the science for schools coordinator at the Royal Institution, which tried out a PDA system called Science Navigator. The guide incorporated a Global Positioning System to show visitors around its London home, where there were not always staff on hand to give directions.
The main problem, Brown says, was that some visitors had difficulties getting to grips with the touchscreen device. 'We were asking the visitors to cope with a lot in a very short space of time,' she says. Clearer instructions at the start of the guide were needed, but the advantage was the flexibility of content.
'Everyone from eight-year-old kids to scientists with PhDs came to use them, says Brown. 'The layering of content was really good. You could tailor it to your level of interest.'
Other museums have already invited visitors to get out their phones - which removes the need for instructions and hiring of units altogether. In an exhibition last year at Copenhagen's Statens Museum for Kunst, entitled Matisse &, information on some of the painter's works was available by text message to a visitor's own phone.
Users paid the price of a regular text message for each nugget of content - meaning the overall experience would usually cost less than renting an audio guide.
'Some of the older staff members were sceptical,' says Tine Nygaard, the curator of the exhibition. 'They were afraid this SMS service would make a lot of noise in the exhibition, but we asked visitors to switch off the sound. It's proved to be quite a silent and intimate experience.'
'We meet the kids where they're at - on the internet and on their mobile phones,' says Paul Clements, the creative director of Shockwaved, the Copenhagen-based company behind the system. 'Kids were actually coming into the museum because of the SMS service.'
Hypertag's tag units are used on advertising boards to allow passers-by to download information about the product to their phone, so it's no surprise that some of the more promising trials have taken place outdoors.
The Urban Tapestries knowledge sharing project in London has tested a system enabling people to use a PDA or mobile phone to post comments for other users or access location-based content via a mobile phone network.
According to Will Pearson at Nesta, there hasn't yet been a 'killer application' for mobile phone technology in an exhibition. It's also seen as a rather flat form of interaction, just texting back and forth. But he adds that museums and galleries see it as a powerful future tool.
Catherine Aldridge, the education development director at At-Bristol, says there are still issues to be addressed with handheld guides. 'There are huge practical implications of giving them out to visitors, plus safety and hygiene factors. I do think things will go down the mobile phone route: that technology has never been more pervasive. Everyone has a mobile, though you can put richer content on a PDA.'
She adds: 'Mobile phones will be the way forward in gallery and museum environments. In more hands-on environments I think bar-codes and radio frequency identification (see box) will be more common.'
In the Matisse & exhibition in Copenhagen, the text messages virtually replaced traditional labelling. Could mobile technology also signal the end of the tour guide?
'Guided tours are very labour intensive,' says Aldridge. 'You'll never replace that richness with technology, but technology can go some way to providing a deeper experience if guides aren't around.'
Roland Lloyd Parry is a freelance journalist
Who's doing what with PDAs and mobiles
PDA multimedia tour
Produced by: Antenna Audio
Tate Modern, London
Handheld iPAQ receives content stored on museum's central server via a wireless network that locates the visitor in the gallery.
Wireless-enabled network journey
Science Navigator system, Royal Institution of Great Britain, London
PDAs with ethernet cards and position-location software pick up signals from sensory points connected to the museum's network. PDA automatically updates itself and downloads content.
Magus Guide (Personal digital assistant or PDA)
Produced by Hypertag
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; At-Bristol; the National Space Centre, Leicester (and elsewhere in UK); Brooklyn Museum, New York; Singapore Art Museum; Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore
Visitors point and click at infrared tags with handheld wireless touchscreen PDA. Tag activates audio and video content on PDA, or sends it to PDA via wireless network.
Interactive information guide (using mobile phones)
Produced by Hypertag
Norwich Cathedral; Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce's Weee Man statue (Eden Project)
Visitors download anything from a map to a mini website in the Java programming language onto their mobile phone from a Hypertag unit on the site.
Ultrasonic position sensing
Nottingham Castle Museum (trialled)
Ultrasound location device triggers multimedia presentations on handheld unit as the visitor moves around, guiding them to exhibits to match their interest.
SMS content system
Produced by: Shockwaved
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Museum buys access to SMS (text message) telephone platform and content management system, which stores bite-sized texts. Visitors text an enquiry to a number indicated on the exhibits and receive information in a text message.
My Art Space
Produced by: The Sea, mobile technology agency, funded by Culture Online
D-Day Museum, Portsmouth; Urbis, Manchester; The Study Gallery, Poole
Visitors download details of exhibits to mobile phones. Their selection is then made into an online gallery on a website, where users can post comments.
Radio frequency identification
Being considered by some museums
A bar-coded tag is loaded with information about the individual visitor. Sensors connected to the museum's servers read the tag and provide information tailored to the visitor's interests
At-Bristol is one of several museums in the UK that have successfully tested personal digital assistants (PDAs), which are linked into a wireless network to provide visitors with multimedia content on the exhibits. At-Bristol's content includes videos, games and quizzes.
The next step is to let visitors download content directly to the mobile phone they bring with them. 'The technology's already there,' Grenfell says. 'It's just a question of making it a bit more compact and user-friendly.'
Grenfell is not the only museum professional to be aware of the potential sitting in visitors' pockets. Museums that are able to tap into people's mobiles wouldn't experience the same logistical problems they do in hiring out PDAs - At-Bristol currently has about 15, which take six hours to charge for two hours of use, limiting the number of school groups that can have them in a day.
'There has been increasing interest in mobile phones recently,' says Mimia Margiotta, the interpretation consultant for Hypertag, the Cambridge-based company behind the Magus Guide, the interactive visitor interpretation system used at At-Bristol and elsewhere (see box, p31). The Magus Guide uses tags on exhibits to activate content either stored locally on PDAs or remotely over a wireless network installed in the site.
'Currently there are limitations as far as mobile phones are concerned, mainly because of the screen size,' Margiotta says. 'Images and text would not look as clear as they would on the bigger screens that PDAs have.'
Another problem with using mobiles is that the content generally downloads quite slowly, as it is transferred to the mobile phone through a wireless WAP network, which is not always reliable in buildings. Not all visitors have Java MIDP2 mobile phones, the only type hi-tech enough to download the Java applications that provide the visual, audio and text information on At-Bristol's PDAs.
'At the moment even someone with the latest Java phone would experience limitations,' says Margiotta. 'And downloading information would cost visitors money.'
But even if there are difficulties at the moment, the future looks bright for mobiles in museums. Mike Sharples, the director of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, sheds some light on the way things are going.
'PDAs and mobile phones are converging,' he says.
The advantage of the PDA systems is that client software can be pre-loaded onto the devices handed out by the museum, according to Sharples. At the moment, even someone with a Java-enabled phone would have to download software to it in order to use it to get content from a museum's wireless network.
'Mobile phones rely on either SMS messaging, which is restricted to text, or web browsers or Flash players, which aren't available on all phones,' Sharples explains. 'And neither offers automatic location-based delivery of content.'
But new technology to enhance handheld devices - such as ultrasound positioning devices, software to download content automatically and devices with global positioning for outside exhibitions - is constantly being developed.
The trials of PDAs, meanwhile, give encouraging signs of what handheld devices can do for a museum. 'No site felt it was counter-productive - they felt it enhanced what they were doing,' says Will Pearson, the learning programme manager at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta), referring to trials of PDA guide systems funded by Nesta in four organisations (the National Space Centre, the Fitzwilliam Museum, At-Bristol and the Royal Institution of Great Britain).
Problems cited in feedback related to the process of instructing people how to use the devices - something that children and young people find much easier than older visitors.
'We launched people a bit too much in the deep end,' says Olympia Brown, the science for schools coordinator at the Royal Institution, which tried out a PDA system called Science Navigator. The guide incorporated a Global Positioning System to show visitors around its London home, where there were not always staff on hand to give directions.
The main problem, Brown says, was that some visitors had difficulties getting to grips with the touchscreen device. 'We were asking the visitors to cope with a lot in a very short space of time,' she says. Clearer instructions at the start of the guide were needed, but the advantage was the flexibility of content.
'Everyone from eight-year-old kids to scientists with PhDs came to use them, says Brown. 'The layering of content was really good. You could tailor it to your level of interest.'
Other museums have already invited visitors to get out their phones - which removes the need for instructions and hiring of units altogether. In an exhibition last year at Copenhagen's Statens Museum for Kunst, entitled Matisse &, information on some of the painter's works was available by text message to a visitor's own phone.
Users paid the price of a regular text message for each nugget of content - meaning the overall experience would usually cost less than renting an audio guide.
'Some of the older staff members were sceptical,' says Tine Nygaard, the curator of the exhibition. 'They were afraid this SMS service would make a lot of noise in the exhibition, but we asked visitors to switch off the sound. It's proved to be quite a silent and intimate experience.'
'We meet the kids where they're at - on the internet and on their mobile phones,' says Paul Clements, the creative director of Shockwaved, the Copenhagen-based company behind the system. 'Kids were actually coming into the museum because of the SMS service.'
Hypertag's tag units are used on advertising boards to allow passers-by to download information about the product to their phone, so it's no surprise that some of the more promising trials have taken place outdoors.
The Urban Tapestries knowledge sharing project in London has tested a system enabling people to use a PDA or mobile phone to post comments for other users or access location-based content via a mobile phone network.
According to Will Pearson at Nesta, there hasn't yet been a 'killer application' for mobile phone technology in an exhibition. It's also seen as a rather flat form of interaction, just texting back and forth. But he adds that museums and galleries see it as a powerful future tool.
Catherine Aldridge, the education development director at At-Bristol, says there are still issues to be addressed with handheld guides. 'There are huge practical implications of giving them out to visitors, plus safety and hygiene factors. I do think things will go down the mobile phone route: that technology has never been more pervasive. Everyone has a mobile, though you can put richer content on a PDA.'
She adds: 'Mobile phones will be the way forward in gallery and museum environments. In more hands-on environments I think bar-codes and radio frequency identification (see box) will be more common.'
In the Matisse & exhibition in Copenhagen, the text messages virtually replaced traditional labelling. Could mobile technology also signal the end of the tour guide?
'Guided tours are very labour intensive,' says Aldridge. 'You'll never replace that richness with technology, but technology can go some way to providing a deeper experience if guides aren't around.'
Roland Lloyd Parry is a freelance journalist
Who's doing what with PDAs and mobiles
PDA multimedia tour
Produced by: Antenna Audio
Tate Modern, London
Handheld iPAQ receives content stored on museum's central server via a wireless network that locates the visitor in the gallery.
Wireless-enabled network journey
Science Navigator system, Royal Institution of Great Britain, London
PDAs with ethernet cards and position-location software pick up signals from sensory points connected to the museum's network. PDA automatically updates itself and downloads content.
Magus Guide (Personal digital assistant or PDA)
Produced by Hypertag
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge; At-Bristol; the National Space Centre, Leicester (and elsewhere in UK); Brooklyn Museum, New York; Singapore Art Museum; Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore
Visitors point and click at infrared tags with handheld wireless touchscreen PDA. Tag activates audio and video content on PDA, or sends it to PDA via wireless network.
Interactive information guide (using mobile phones)
Produced by Hypertag
Norwich Cathedral; Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce's Weee Man statue (Eden Project)
Visitors download anything from a map to a mini website in the Java programming language onto their mobile phone from a Hypertag unit on the site.
Ultrasonic position sensing
Nottingham Castle Museum (trialled)
Ultrasound location device triggers multimedia presentations on handheld unit as the visitor moves around, guiding them to exhibits to match their interest.
SMS content system
Produced by: Shockwaved
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen
Museum buys access to SMS (text message) telephone platform and content management system, which stores bite-sized texts. Visitors text an enquiry to a number indicated on the exhibits and receive information in a text message.
My Art Space
Produced by: The Sea, mobile technology agency, funded by Culture Online
D-Day Museum, Portsmouth; Urbis, Manchester; The Study Gallery, Poole
Visitors download details of exhibits to mobile phones. Their selection is then made into an online gallery on a website, where users can post comments.
Radio frequency identification
Being considered by some museums
A bar-coded tag is loaded with information about the individual visitor. Sensors connected to the museum's servers read the tag and provide information tailored to the visitor's interests
