Electronic museum guide

An Electronic Museum Guide (also known as audio guide) is a handheld device specially produced to provide audio, visual or textual content to museum visitors with or without user interaction. Electronic Museum Guide may provide alternating content to different personal preferences.Electronic Museum Guide may include accessories such as headphones, stylus pens; and may include displays with Leds or LCD Screens.

Usage Areas

Electronic Museum Guides are used in every type of museum [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Types_of_museum] . Including open area museums.

Fee

Electronic Museum Guides may be provided by the museums with or without a fee. Some museums offer the systems with entrance ticket or promotional tickets.

Content Types

Museum Guides provides content to visitors in several forms

Audio Content

Textual Content

Visual Content including videos, animations and so on.

Content Alternatives

Electronic Museum Guides shall be operated to supply content in different languages and accents, with different voice alternatives like (Man/Woman/Child/Native Speaker/TV Speaker/etc.), with text, with age group specific content [An Electronic Guide In Use [http://www.bartneck.de/publications/2007/museumGuideInRealUse/index.html] ] .

Content Alternating Mechanism

Electronic Museum Guides may alter their contents by user or operator selection; or may be provided by distinct different physical devices.

Extra Contents

Electronic Museum Guides shall include extra contents like ads, banners, sponsor links, and so on.
Electronic Museum Guides shall play the extra content with object triggering, time triggering, location triggering or action triggering mechanisms.

Tour Guiding Mechanism

Electronic Museum Guides may provide several options for tour guiding.

Self Motivated Tours : Visitor shall tour the museum on behalf.

Directed Tours : Visitor is directed by the system in a manner such that visitor can visit object by object section by section or theme by theme. This option can also be altered by restricting the time of visit.

Semi-Directed Tours : Visitor is directed by the system but he or she can break the sequence and can then join the sequence respectively.

Operating Alternatives

Electronic museum guides may be operated by several ways:

Touch/push buttonned systems will be operated by the visitor. Visitor will enter the code assigned to the object to the electronic museum guide and the related content is provided. [The Learning Experience With Electronic Museum Guides [http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/1931-3896.S.1.18] ]

Location aware systems will semi automatically operate. They sense the location by several alternative technologies and provide the related content. If the sensing area is not narrow enough to detect every different object then the visitor will enter or select the content he or she wants. Location aware systems provides better quality tours to disabled people. [Accessible Design of a Portable ElectronicMuseum Guide for Universal Access [http://rehab-www.eng.cam.ac.uk/cwuaat/04/34-pat-cmc-knapp-revision.pdf] ]

Line of Sight Aware Systems will automatically operate. They sense the location and the target object and provides the related content. These systems may include an artificial intelligence that will meaure the visitor aims and interest areas and may provide shallower or deeper information for the object. [Affective Aware Museum Guide [http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/WMTE.2005.8] ] These systems may need special technologies for target detection.

Interactive Electronic Museum Guides

Electronic Museum Guides can be interactive. The interactiveness may include

Short Messaging between visitors or museum staff

Souvenir Sales Integration

Voice Message Recording

Action, Presentation, Meeting Planning

Object/Content blogging, podcasting, social tagging + folksonomy

Conduct Survey

Collect Opinions

Measure Customer Satisfaction Survey

Museum Management Support Feautures

Electronic Museum Guides shall provide the museum management great statistics and reports [Learning from Museums: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning: Visitor Experiences and the Making of Meaning (American Association for State and Local History Book Series) [http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Museums-Experiences-American-Association/dp/0742502953] ] . Which may include

Tour Statistics

Visitor Statistics

Visitor aims

Object Statistics

Opinions

Survey Results and statistics

References