AUDIOGUIDES
GUIDELINES GUIDELINES
Audioguide technology is constantly evolving and so are the ways guides are being used. Andrea Jezovit rounds up some of the latest projects
TOURING EXHIBITIONS Touring Exhibitions, creator of Abbaworld, has built a new audioguide from scratch to facilitate the highly interactive touring exhi- bition, which has already been in London, UK and is currently showing in Melbourne, Australia. The Touring Exhibitions Player (TXP) is an essential part of the exhibition, allowing visitors to point at an object and have information play automatically. Touring Exhibitions decided to design
its own guide when, after some research, the company couldn’t fi nd a guide on the market to suit its purposes. “The entire point of Abbaworld was to get people to interact. It’s more like going to Mamma Mia the musical than a traditional exhibi- tion,” says Touring Exhibitions president Magnus Danielsson. “People are singing and dancing throughout the exhibitions, so
AM 3 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
we wanted to have a very easy system, easy for children and uncompli- cated. With a lot of other systems on the market, it’s like a big remote con- trol in your hand and you feel like you’re missing
out on parts of the exhibition because you don’t have time to learn all its functions.” As this was Touring Exhibitions’ fi rst time
creating a guide, there were challenges, Danielsson notes, but a team consisting of in-house staff and partners on the techni- cal side were able to successfully create the product, which Danielsson describes as more like a game controller than an audioguide. “I would more compare it to a Wii game controller or an iPod gadget. It’s more of a cool gadget than it is a tradi- tional square audioguide.” It works through RFID (radio frequency identifi cation) tech- nology, allowing visitors to interact with different objects through radio transmitters. Touring Exhibitions is marketing the
guide to other attractions, and it will launch in at least one, possibly two museums this summer, Danielsson says. “That was not
Antenna Audio’s guide for War Museum Duxford won a Jodi Award
the intention when we developed it, but there’s been a lot of interest, so we’ve decided to make it available.”
ANTENNA AUDIO Antenna has won a prestigious award for an audioguide for the visually impaired, which was created for the AirSpace Gallery at the Imperial War Museum Duxford, UK. The Jodi Award, which celebrates best practice in digital technology allowing access to culture for people with disabili- ties, was awarded in December. The guide, which launched at the museum in October 2008, was created through consultation with visually impaired visitors. “The museum invited local visu- ally impaired people to join a focus group to assist with the audio guide project. They informed and reviewed the tenders and Antenna Audio was their unanimous choice,” says Kay Cooper, the museum’s interpretation administration assistant. “ Antenna had a focus group of its own, and
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital 47
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