It is hardly surprising that Met Fifth Avenue in New York, made up of 20 interconnected areas built at different times since the art museum first opened at the site in 1880, is continually refining its approach to wayfinding to increase visitors’ understanding of the building and its collections.
In March the museum launched a digital version of its visitor map, which was ordinarily only available to visitors as a printed document.
The new map, released in 11 different languages, is a culmination of the museum’s work with consultancy firm Applied Wayfinding, and Living Map, specialists in creating, managing and publishing mapping systems for places with high footfall, including cities, airports, campuses and shopping centres.
“The museum's new digital map is first and foremost a dataset. We've mapped out the geo-coordinates of every public space across our three locations, and to this dataset we've added information about the floor, unique ID, type, and title (and more) of each room,” writes Loic Tallon, the Met’s deputy chief of digital, in a recent blog post.
“The digital map you can now see online is dynamically rendered from that dataset. And because the map is dynamically rendered, we can manage the properties (and even languages) of each data point so that the type of information displayed on the map is appropriate to the context in which it is displayed," explains Tallon.
This means that the map has a number of zoom levels, showing how the collection is split into themes across the building before focusing in on different areas and revealing gallery numbers and other facilities.
But going digital has not been without its challenges. It was difficult to develop a “scalable” and “sustainable” digital map that could be used across the website (desktop and mobile), the Met app, the audio guide and on interactive signage in the museums, writes Tallon.
“It's a powerful tool with a lot of potential, but it's going to take some time for us to learn how to use it to its full potential and to integrate it into our various digital products successfully.
“The launch version looks great on desktop, but there's work to be done for mobile. Also, all the data is hosted externally with Living Map's software, and the connections between the map, metmuseum.org and the Met app are yet to be sown; clicking on a gallery link on metmuseum.org does not currently take you to the same gallery on the digital map.
That's obviously the plan, but we need to build this out in a manner that can be scaled from the website to the app, audio guide, and in-gallery signage too,” writes Tallon.
In order to achieve this a locations API (application program interface) – the set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications – is being built. This will allow all the Met’s digital products to communicate with the digital map, which will in turn, be able to be able to take on up-to-date location-related information about the museum.
In March the museum launched a digital version of its visitor map, which was ordinarily only available to visitors as a printed document.
The new map, released in 11 different languages, is a culmination of the museum’s work with consultancy firm Applied Wayfinding, and Living Map, specialists in creating, managing and publishing mapping systems for places with high footfall, including cities, airports, campuses and shopping centres.
“The museum's new digital map is first and foremost a dataset. We've mapped out the geo-coordinates of every public space across our three locations, and to this dataset we've added information about the floor, unique ID, type, and title (and more) of each room,” writes Loic Tallon, the Met’s deputy chief of digital, in a recent blog post.
“The digital map you can now see online is dynamically rendered from that dataset. And because the map is dynamically rendered, we can manage the properties (and even languages) of each data point so that the type of information displayed on the map is appropriate to the context in which it is displayed," explains Tallon.
This means that the map has a number of zoom levels, showing how the collection is split into themes across the building before focusing in on different areas and revealing gallery numbers and other facilities.
But going digital has not been without its challenges. It was difficult to develop a “scalable” and “sustainable” digital map that could be used across the website (desktop and mobile), the Met app, the audio guide and on interactive signage in the museums, writes Tallon.
“It's a powerful tool with a lot of potential, but it's going to take some time for us to learn how to use it to its full potential and to integrate it into our various digital products successfully.
“The launch version looks great on desktop, but there's work to be done for mobile. Also, all the data is hosted externally with Living Map's software, and the connections between the map, metmuseum.org and the Met app are yet to be sown; clicking on a gallery link on metmuseum.org does not currently take you to the same gallery on the digital map.
That's obviously the plan, but we need to build this out in a manner that can be scaled from the website to the app, audio guide, and in-gallery signage too,” writes Tallon.
In order to achieve this a locations API (application program interface) – the set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications – is being built. This will allow all the Met’s digital products to communicate with the digital map, which will in turn, be able to be able to take on up-to-date location-related information about the museum.