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Keynote Presentation: Chris Alexander

Page history last edited by Nancy Proctor 15 years, 6 months ago

Abstract

Chris Alexander discusses how the San Jose Museum of Art has managed to create an ongoing handheld tour programme with a technology department of one person. Since 2005 the museum has used third party solutions and platforms to leverage its technology programs with positive results. By using Video iPods, mobile phone technology, and most currently the iPod Touch/iPhone the museum has worked towards offering its visitors a unique experience that brings them closer than ever to the artist and their work. The museum creates its own content in-house and offers it via handheld technology without a reliance on outsourcing.

Tate Handheld Conference

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Comments (10)

William Bode said

at 6:58 am on Sep 17, 2008

Chris I was very interested in your use of the iPod Touch in the gallery space. The device has many options and I wondered how you locked it down and made the browser work in kiosk mode. I also hoped Jane Burton from Tate could comment on how they used the iPod touch at Tate Liverpool? Would you recommend it's further use? Do you know of anyone who has used the iPod touch with Andriod the open source Google developed operating system? Would either Tate or SJMA be willing to collaborate over "in house " user interface development options?

Bruce Falk said

at 7:48 am on Sep 17, 2008

What does the group think about creating a shared online tool set under a GNU or like open-license? That way, instead of reinventing a solution with whatever resources may be to hand, Museums could focus those resources on content development, choosing platforms that seem best suited to the approach(es) they wish to pursue and/or adding to existing toolsets as needed. The model established not least by the GMU Center for History and New Media's http://omeka.org seems to be working well?

Chris Alexander said

at 12:35 pm on Sep 18, 2008

(Cont. from above due to character limitations.)

As far as a handheld device and recommending it's further use I would give an emphatic "Yes". The platform is an incredible one to work one. I work mostly with the Safari Mobile Browser which is in some cases more advanced than some desktop browsers. It's very nice to only design for one browser as well and not worry about all the other ones.

The nice thing about working with the Safari Browser is that the upcoming browser being released with Android is that it also utilizes the Webkit browser platform. Hopefully this will make the tour compatible on those upcoming devices as well with minimal tweaking. The Android operating system cannot be loaded onto an iPhone or and iPod Touch, only on those handhelds that are part of the Android OS Alliance, i.e. Nokia, Motorola, etc.

Can you explain further your last question about collaborating?

Hope that helps!

Chris Alexander

Chris Alexander said

at 12:36 pm on Sep 18, 2008

William,

The San Jose Museum of Art worked, with Apple's recommendation, with Contour Cases. They created a clear plastic case without the cutout for the home screen button. Without that button most people are locked out of the home screen. Some tech savvy people will be able to figure out that if you power the unit down and then power it up you will be on the home screen, but I don't think that this has happened too much. With the 2.0 software update for both iPhone and iPod Touch Apple implemented a Parental Control option that will help to eliminate access to some of the programs as well. I have not tried this option yet because I'm waiting for the firmware to stabilize (which I think it might have with the recent 2.1 release) before I update.

Apple has also promised a full screen mode with their Safari Mobile Browser that will hide the url bar and the navigation controls at the bottom of the page. It was supposed to be in the 2.0 release, but it is still missing even in the 2.1 release of last week. This feature will help prevent people from using the device for surfing the internet in your gallery space, not that it has been a problem at our museum.




Chris Alexander said

at 12:37 pm on Sep 18, 2008

Sorry about above. Didn't quite get it right!

Doug McFarlane said

at 12:42 pm on Sep 18, 2008

Awesome Chris - I didn't notice the restrictions tab that has apperaed in the settings before... I was worried about people messing about and installing apps with the 2.0 release (although I guess they would have to sign in with their iTunes account) and now I can turn it off! Thanks again!

William Bode said

at 11:41 am on Sep 26, 2008

Chris,

Would you be able to share your contact with Contour Cases? I know it is a big ask but I wondered if you are willing to share your xml code as a template for other museums as ours to rework and load for our own tours? Have you come up with a way of enabling your none techy staff to just create content within a form or a template so all you have to do is load it on and know the content already fits within the page limitations and looks good for the device? I was told by someone that the iPod Touch doesn't come with the delete button out of the box, but the option was added in when you upgraded the software. Do you know what features are an advantage from upgrading. If the delete function( when you touch the screen moving in a horizontal motion using the video list) is not there in the earlier version I would prefer that. How do you deal with the address bar, the home button, and bookmarks? Do you have to have wifi on to use the Safari browser? I'm sorry if I am asking too many questions.

Cheers in advance,

William

Chris Alexander said

at 3:15 pm on Sep 26, 2008

William,

I posted our contact at Contour on the "Resources" page which you can find in the sidebar.

The tour is written with the IUI framework that is also listed on the Resources page. The framework consists of a page of Javascript code, a CSS file and some XHTML Templates. I basically took the framework and tweaked it into our current tour. I don't have any other staff that need to access this code so it is not set up as a template, but for someone with a web background it is pretty straight forward after examining the code for a little bit in the IUI framework.

I'm not sure what you mean by the delete function. If you can explain further what you mean I can try and answer. The are options in email and SMS on the iPhone and iPod Touch where you can swipe your finger across a list item and receive the option to delete. Is this what you mean? The way that this tour is set up through the Safari Mobile Web Browser there is no way to delete anything.

The Home Button is not accessible due to the special case that we have. The address bar is hidden at the top with the IUI Javascript Framework (but can still be pulled down) and unfortunately the navigation at the bottom is currently accessible. I have yet to experiment with a Full Screen Mode that Apple has built into the iPod Touch Firmware. I'll post more here after I learn more.

Yes, in order to use our tour you have to be connected to WiFi to receive the content. I don't know of any way to retrieve the content through the browser without it. You would have to have a local database on the unit and some sort of App interface to retrieve it.

Hope that helps!

Chris

William Bode said

at 4:24 am on Sep 27, 2008

Chris, I just want to say thanks for all your help. If you are interested we are currently testing in one of our galleries the iPod Touch. We have recorded audio, added stills and "subtitling" and play the video from the video list with all the content loaded on the device. With a short play list it works fine, except for the delete function which you described correctly. We are also looking at other possible devices. I wondered why you could not just load all the content right on the iPod Touch and have the "home page" of the browser set to start on "index" page and then have all the links refer to the storage location with in the folder structure of the device. All media links and so on would be local to the handset and if the web site content all referd to the local folder or even have all files in one big folder with no subfolders so the xhtml would always refer to the content with no path. If it was all local there would be no need for the wifi to be turned on and the battery life would be much longer.
Have you thought about any other devices? I noticed when I was in the states this summer that some GPS devices were very small, with touch screens, were running windows ce in the background, had audio and video capabilities,had a lot of processing power, and most importantly cost less per unit than the iPod touch. Because they were running windows CE out of the box it made them much more modifiable, which a look on Youtube confirmed with many people re-purposing them.

Chris Alexander said

at 6:24 pm on Oct 6, 2008

William,

Sorry for the late reply again.

As far as I know there is no way to load all the necessary files on to the unit and access them as a Localhost. If anyone out there does please let me know. Also, the rational behind using a browser based solution is to save myself the time of having to load all the units with the content individually. This was very time consuming when we were using the Video iPods in Notes-Only mode even with only 10 iPods! By hosting it on a server all the units will have the most recent tour and anyone coming in with their own device will as well.

So far, we have not encountered any battery issues, but then again the units are not checked out all day long. The Tate might have more info on battery life that they can add. Their usage at the Klimt show was considerable.

As for other devices, no, we have not considered using any others. The allure of the iPod Touch for our visitors along with the ease of programming for me have made it the platform of choice. My thoughts are that it is leading the pack with handhelds, especially in the area of web standards support. This in the end I think will make more developers make web standards compliant browsers on their devices which will hopefully be compatible with our tour. Googles Android I understand is going to have a webkit based browser which is what Safari Mobile Browser is built on.

From what I hear GPS is hard to utilize inside museums because the device needs a direct path to the satellites to receive a signal. Walls, ceilings and such get in the way and do not provide accurate coordinate information.

Hope this helps!

Chris

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