Project Title:  StreetMuseum 

Museum/ Institution: Museum of London  

Media Category: handheld/mobile 

Program Created:  Launched May 2010 

Program URL http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/MuseumOfLondon/Resources/app/you-are-here-app/index.html

Project Image(s) and/or Video

Media Source(s)/Credit(s):

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/MuseumOfLondon/Resources/app/you-are-here-app/index.html

Program Description: (150-250 words)

Using geotagging and Google Maps, The Museum of London’s StreetMuseum augmented reality app truly takes history out of the museum, and into the streets. The free app can be downloaded to an iPhone (no Android yet), and then hundreds of images from the museums collection can be viewed at Points of Interest around the city, at the same locations flagged in the app, creating, as the museum website says “a window through time”. The app makes use of over 400 years of historic imagery, from paintings to photographs, with some clarifying text.

Marketing Manager Vicky Lee says: “If you have a 3GS iPhone these images can be viewed in 2D and also in 3D, as a ghostly overlay on the present day scene. The AR function cannot be offered on 3G iPhones but users can still track the images through their GPS and view them in 2D, with the ability to zoom in and see detail”. The museum offers this for people to use as they move around the City (there are wide-ranging locations, distributed over most city boroughs), and then also invites participants into the Museum for more discovery.

http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2010/06/01/streetmuseum-qa-with-vicky-lee-museum-of-london/

Firsthand or secondary review/critique: (150-250 words) 

This looks like a beautiful AR application, and I hope to be able to see it in London. It doesn’t feel gimmicky at all, but a good use of an available technology. I have not seen one negative comment on any of the sites and blogs I looked at researching this, nothing but appreciation. The museum expected to use the AR as a campaign to reach younger potential visitors, and to spread viraly. The high visibility of this project was an incentive for the Creative Agency Brothers and Sisters, who worked with them. In a video about the agency website (A Film About Us) they say “If you make something compelling, useful and original, the returns you can get are phenomenal”. It seems to have worked, with tens of thousands of downloads. They ascribe part of their success to keeping it intentionally simple. That comes across in the clarity of purpose and the elegant simplicity of the design, and the timely nature of the technology. 

http://www.brothersandsisters.co.uk/

Technologies incorporated:

Geotagging, geolocation, Google maps, augmented reality 

Internally or externally produced:

Externally produced by creative agency Brothers and Sisters 

Entry Contributor and Date: 

Laurie Stepp 11/29/2011

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