San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is leveraging Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon technology to provide content about exhibits to visitors at its facility. But the museum’s long-term plan is to provide more for guests—for instance, ticketing on the street front.
During the next few years, Asian Art Museum intends to provide what it calls the Digital-Optimized Visitor Experience, a system to deliver personalized content to visitors based on their preferences, location—both inside and outside the building—and relationship with the museum (a member, for instance, or a first-time visitor). The experience is expected to leverage visitors’ smartphones, as well as digital signage and touch screens. Once the solution is fully in place, it will employ a combination of BLE beacons and radio frequency identification.
The museum began this effort with a BLE system—which was provided by Cuseum—for more than a year, in order to determine how it can provide individualized visitor journeys for its customers, depending on their interests. The beacons have been in place since April 2015 at the sites of approximately two dozen objects, as well as at some architectural features of the building in which the collection is housed (in a landmark Beaux-Arts building), located in downtown San Francisco.
Asian Art Museum offers one of the largest Asian art collections in the world, totaling more than 18,000 pieces that date back as many as 6,000 years. Approximately 2,200 are currently on view. Its visitors come from throughout the world. By incorporating location-based technology, the museum hopes to enhance the visiting experience for its customers by offering them individual exhibit information as needed, as well as suggestions of other exhibits to view as part of their journey.
The museum began working with Cuseum on a beacon-based solution to provide mobile engagement-based content to visitors, based on location and context, on their smartphones, says Brendan Ciecko, Cuseum’s CEO and founder. “The museum wanted a broader strategy related to how they interact with visitors,” he states.
While the museum is using the beacons to bring information to visitors regarding key exhibits, says Jonathan Lee, Asian Art Museum’s head of digital experience, it intends to utilize the system as part of the Digital Optimized Visitor Experience in other ways as well. “Our intention,” he explains, “has been that we look at the technology with a holistic approach.”
Currently, individuals who visit the art museum can opt for an enhanced experience by downloading the museum’s app on their iOS device. That app is provided using Cuseum’s mobile-engagement solution.
If the device’s Bluetooth radio is turned on, users can begin receiving object-based content offers when they come within range of each of Cuseum’s beacons throughout the facility. An individual can choose his or her language, as well as view history, images and videos related to each item.
The museum can also use the technology to tailor the information that visitors receive, based on the interests they input upon arriving at the museum—though it is not yet offering that feature. If a person were to use it in this way, he or she could indicate an interest in ceramics, for instance, and then be directed to pieces in that category.
“We’re still trying to decide what is the best mix for our audience,” Lee says. Some visitors are older and less interested in using a smartphone or tablet to access data digitally, he notes, while others may be enthusiastic about some features, but not want to feel they are being inundated with messaging.
Looking ahead, the museum not only intends to add more beacons and greater functionality (according to Lee, additional beacons will be installed this spring and summer), but also may opt to experiment with RFID tags on lanyards or devices that visitors could carry with them and then return to the museum at the end of their visit. The RFID technology could be used to identify a visitor and display a video of interest on a nearby screen, for example.
The beacon data can also enable the museum to study the flow of visitor traffic and determine how traffic management can be optimized. It can also enable future exhibition planning and design based on traffic flow. “This is a transformative opportunity to analyze how people walk through,” Lee explains, as well as whether they pause in front of certain exhibits, but bypass others. If most visitors are missing an important piece, for example, that could indicate that it needs to be relocated.
What’s more, the museum envisions using beacon technology to create digital connections with visitors in order to drive donations and memberships, or to conduct conversations with them about exhibits or artwork of interest. In the long run, Ciecko says, the museum intends to go beyond “just triggering information about an object in front of you.”
In addition to adding beacons this summer, the museum plans to provide a formal visitor questionnaire, which will help it to better understand its visitors’ interests.
More than a hundred museums are now using Cuseum’s platform, Ciecko says, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston. the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston and the North Carolina Museum of Art.