A talk I did at the Barbican for IT4ARTS, one of London's liveries. What is the challenge for arts organisations, both in general, but also on web, mobile and social? What mistakes can be made, what concept successes have already been proven? The Tate forms a large part of the case studies used.

1. Some thoughts
on
art and the
mobile

2. @HerrHuld
@Econsultancy
ben.davis@econsultancy.com

3. 1. The broader challenge.
2. Social media.
3. Your website.
4. Apps.
5. Summary.

4. HG WELLS, 1937, proposed a World Brain (of
microfilm).
Collection was the purpose for museums.
Now collection is less of a pressing issue.
We’ve collected and digitised plenty.
Arguably the challenge for the arts is not
collection, nor engagement (they’re good at
that already), but scale of engagement.
Mobile is one way to target scale, but it’s a
bit of a red herring. It’s a medium, not a
strategy.
Actually scale comes from openness.
Openness around data and copyright –
allowing for collaboration.
Thanks to Tijana Tasich for the HG Wells reference
http://www.yimf.org/papers/5-2-A%20Tijana%20Tasich.pdf

5. READ THIS PRESENTATION.
Museum attendance has
been the same for 30 odd
years.
Now there are 2.4billion
internet users and it’s not
too ambitious to target
them.
http://www.slideshare.net
/edsonm/the-age-ofscale-18954410

6. Michael talks about APIs and creative commons.
Follow these links: http://goo.gl/df1uOa & http://goo.gl/aiqspm
Releasing more data can lead to collaboration from those just as passionate about what
you do. The example above is Forte, an app produced by a chap called Jake, utilising the
National Library of Australia’s sheet music collection.

7. Eurpeana:
‘Aggregate – We are building the open, trusted source for European cultural content
Facilitate – We support the cultural heritage sector through knowledge transfer,
innovation and advocacy
Distribute – We make heritage available to people wherever they are, whenever they
want it
Engage – We cultivate new ways for people to participate in their cultural heritage’

8. Edson refers to non-economic interactions.
1.8 billion edits of wikipedia. Kickstarter. Smart
History by Khan Academy. TedX. This engagement
is far stronger than a transaction.
This desire for collaboration, that may not entail
money changing hands, but certainly involves
much work, can be harnessed by arts institutions.

9. Let’s zoom in a bit more, away from the
philosophy of engagement to simply creating
good content yourself.
How can you compete with brands that are
cash rich and getting their piece of the arts pie
and engaging their customers, broadly, but
also on mobile?
Here’s the Green Box Project from Becks –
2011 – an AR app, 1000 calls for submission to
new artists, social activity.
All in line with Beck’s continuing patronage of
the arts.

10. And the Louis Vuitton
Foundation, on the Bois
de Boulogne. Ready
spring 2014 and designed
by Frank Gehry.
Art is displayed in stores,
too.
If I was growing up in
Paris, I might go here,
physically and online,
instead of the Louvre.
They engage with
fashion, design, art and
celebrity.

11. And Burberry are trying to take the music scene as their own with Burberry Acoustic.
How do you stop these guys turning you into a fusty little arts institute with no digital
visitors?

12. Priorities:
1 - A mobile optimised website
1 - A wider ‘digital footprint’
3 - Interactive content, maybe an app
Well, before we get carried away, arts institutions must recognise
there’s a balance to be found between optimising what you have
currently – website and ultimately visits/sales – and the engaging
content you want to be associated with.
Ideally you’d do both at the same time – optimise and innovate.
In theatre and music, as examples, ticketing is important, but equally,
perhaps not that many buy on mobile. However, maybe they want to, if
not now, soon.
Once you decide to create engaging content, mobile is a good place to
do it. There are 1bn smartphones in the world and tablet sales are
outstripping desktop sales.

13. The challenge, and certainly for interactive content, is you’re expected to provide
something that fits with your physical assets. Yet art often can’t be replicated, that’s
the point of it right?
There are seemingly more ways you can go wrong than right, when it comes to mobile
and perhaps specifically to apps.
What help can you get? Who’s doing what? What are brands doing on mobile? If you
think a mobile app isn’t going to represent your content to its finest, should you stick
to social and web?

14. 2011: 500 applications for £500k total (8 grants).
‘The generation of valuable intellectual property or potentially
commercially viable services cannot be discounted.’
2013: £7m, max of £125k.
‘Reaching beyond your project..’
‘Unlocking valuable sources of income..’
Well, in the UK, the size of our service economy and the obvious change in our media
consumption means government offers some help.
The arts and digital R and D grants available from the Arts Council can be explored in
the link and video below.
See above how (in line with our theme of engagement) the criteria have changed over
two years, from ‘asset creation’ to ‘reaching beyond’. It’s not about profit right now,
it’s about non-economic interaction that may in turn unlock revenue.
The money available in the UK has increased significantly over the last two years as
digital obviosly has become more important in education. To apply for a grant, there
must be an arts institution, a research body and a digital service provider involved.
http://www.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtt_wbP41SA

15. So help is available.
But who is using mobile right now in the arts?
Here’s a survey by Pocket Proof, which can be
explored in the link below.
Pocket proof surveyed 551 institutions, mainly
US museums and art galleries. The survey
found 43% are using mobile, this increases to
70% when the art gallery segment is analysed.
Interestingly, there are no standards for
audience, objectives and choice of project.
Offerings differ widely.
However, one size fits all projects are used less,
in favour of multiple experiences. Much like in
a museum/gallery/theatre. The mobile is
simply delivery – it is medium, not content.
Some have a mobile site and a number of apps
and interactive physical approaches.
http://www.slideshare.net/LoicT/mm-survey-2013-report-v1

16. ££££
££££
££££
And in Pocket Proof’s survey, although revenue generation wasn’t seen as an
objective for arts institutions, that doesn’t mean that cost isn’t an issue (in fact it’s
the main one).
Engagement is the main objective for mobile technology in the arts

17. The Pocket Proof survey shows that correlation between size of
institution and whether or not it is using mobile is disappearing.
Likewise the size of organisation is no longer determining whether
tech builds are done in-house or out.

18. Here’s another graph from the Pocket Proof survey. It shows that 9% of
museum mobile experiences are paid.
The survey found that Paid apps tend to have a more traditional format,
akin to guides and audio.
Here, again, it’s pertinent to remember giving away copyright can often
lead to other revenue.
As an example, Monty Python added high quality clips to YouTube and
this led to 23,000% increase in sales of their DVDs.

19. The survey found that first project owners are more optimistic about
lifespan of their app. The average lifespan is around 2.5 years (the life of a
newt) but of course this refers to how long the app is offered before it is
mothballed.
Individual usage is very short, with exponential drop off in number of
users as duration of use increases.

20. Whatever you do, you should be enabling people to communicate by providing WiFi. You
should also be raising awareness of content in your paper and signage.
Obviously the biggest opportunity is for museums and galleries, because mobiles are
allowed, but theatre-goers should be able to tweet, and foreign visitors often need WiFi
to publicise the show they are attending.

21. 1. The challenge.
2. Social media.
3. Your website.
4. Apps.
5. Summary.
Social media has done a lot of your work for you. The apps are better than anything you
can design, they work on the cellular network, they exist on a lot more phones than your
app ever will, across devices. Ok, you have to compete with other content on social but
you can succeed. Fleeting interactions over a number of years is better than two or three
uses of your own app before deletion. So if you have to prioritise, social is more valuable.
If you think mobile apps aren’t going to represent your content to its finest, should you
stick to social? Brands rely on social. Brands aren’t stupid.
Within arts apps, it’s surprising how many are not very good at enabling sharing, when
this should be one of the priorities.

22. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tatemoderndrawingbar
Check out Tate Connects. A Bloomberg sponsored touch screen pad in the Tate
Modern is synced to this Flickr account. Explore it at the URL above.
There’s some really great stuff and it’s very reusable.

23. Saatchi Gallery on Twitter is a notable success story – 1m followers - tweets catnip for
its audience, lots of photos and focuses a lot on the history of the art. I think this
approach can be used by every institution in theatre, music, dance etc.
Your Twitter can be broad.

24. And here they give an exhibition preview to Twitter and FB
followers. A great idea.

25. Even little tactics can help. I intend to visit Greenwich Maritime Museum to
see the Turner and the Sea exhibition. I heard about it via the museum’s
Twitter backdrop.

26. Some don’t do it quite as well. National Gallery only has 160,000 followers. It hasn’t
tweeted an image since July 2012!
Young Vic isn’t bad, but there are too many ‘insider’ tweets that aren’t necessarily
interesting behind the scenes titbits. Their photos can be prosaic and they often
include handles and hashtags but no link to really enjoyable media. What about
embedding videos or Vines?

27. MoMA, particularly MoMA teens, is great on Tumblr. MoMA teens Tumblrs
a lot of urban art, including social issues, such as the recent whitewashing
of Five Points’ graffiti. http://teens.moma.org
I think for Theatre, Opera, Art, pretty much most sectors, Tumblr is a really
great platform. And so easy to use.
The Horniman uses it – admittedly not enough, as does Duchamp & Sons,
a youth groups at the Whitechapel gallery.

28. Facebook, of course, is useful, too, for publicity in the arts. National Gallery
here earns a reprieve. It uses Facebook well, including lots of art work and
questions/trivia.

29. 1. The challenge.
2. Social media.
3. Your website.
4. Apps.
5. Summary.

30. • Responsively designed
– Colston Hall, London Philarmonic
• Partly responsive
– V&A (scales below phablet size)
• Redirected to mobile site
– MOMA
• Just desktop
– National Theatre

31. Colston Hall – built by Palace, from Bristol. Responsive, resizes to size of screen. Go to the site
and play around. Big buttons, sharing, contact. LPO are obviously confident this will improve
booking. http://www.colstonhall.org/
This standardisation of web technology through HTML5, jQuery, Bootstrap as well as open
source OSs – it’s not that risky to design something like Colston Hall. It should last a while.
Oh, and think about copy and content! https://www.gov.uk/designprinciples/styleguide

32. Rijksmuseum website is built tablet-first!
It’s also worth mentioning because it has decided to allow its users to download any of
its photos of artwork, and to use this imagery or alter it as they wish. This has created
quite a buzz and time will tell how much added engagement Rijksmuseum get with their
users.

33. 1. The challenge.
2. Social media.
3. Your website.
4. Apps.
5. Summary.

34. • The most successful apps are free.
• They are tools.
– And news.
– And games.
– And possibly subscriptions.
• A user visits your website but owns your app.
• They are tactical (?)
– They are valuable to teachers.

35. The good thing about the arts is the values for content are already
established. An arts org is unlikely to make one of the mistakes
above.

36. A great app to begin with, the new Pop Art and Design exhibition at the Barbican has a free app
that isn’t dissimilar to Tumblr’s app in its layout. Download it here for free http://www.barbican.org.uk/apps/
The imagery is great, there’s audio from artists and commentators. The UX is particularly good,
above you can see the nice flip transition when one clicks into an image. Great videos on intro.
This app is a wonderfully designed example of KISS (keep it simple stupid). Ok, there’s no
gamified element for kids, but as an app for adults it’s pretty much flawless.

37. •TATE
•Some great concept successes
•Some major bugs
•Augmented reality miss
•Paid apps that could be better
•Overall, a bold and varied approach
The concepts of all their apps are really strong and without any description, one wants to
explore them. E.g. Magic Tate Gallery, Magritte It, Tate Trumps.
Tate promotes them very well on its website and if I was in education I’d be using these heavily.
They can promote them so well because their website is built with a drupal CMS and they have
a very progressive digital strategy which includes lots of cross referencing within the site.

38. http://bcove.me/bjf6mrv0
There’s also a great video on site, introducing their apps. See it at the URL above.

39. Magic Tate Ball
Almost 50% of Tate downloads are the Tate Ball. The app takes user context (time, locale, background noise)
and serves a suited artwork. Download it here free - http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/apps/magictate-ball
Very nice concept and UX. A little slower than an 8 ball. Perfect for teens. Shares nicely to Facebook, though
without photo of artwork.
There’s a strange licensing issue where served artwork is often not store on phone because of copyright. But
when user hits the ‘view on Tate site’ button, the artwork is shown immediately, without a page loading.
This should be slicker – why not simply allow the work to be stored in the app?

40. Magritte It
I love this app and the concept. Take a picture then watch as Magritte’s men fall from the
sky all around.
Only problem is that the sharing and saving video to camera roll does not work. It’s great
fun but pointless if there’s no way to get the end product. Herein lie the dangers of a
concept app, they are a greater technical challenge.
Still the app can be downloaded here for free - http://www.tate.org.uk/context-

41. http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/apps/muybridgizer
The Muybridgizer, another brilliant concept but an app with another big flaw.
Take a short video which is then converted into a zootrope, which you can
‘spin’ with your finger. It’s very addictive and fun – above you can see
Econsultancy Head of Social, Matt Owen.
However, the moving video doesn’t save to camera roll and again can’t be
shared.

42. How not to do augmented reality.
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/apps/pocket-art-gallery
This is the Pocket Art Gallery. One selects four works of art from the Tate collection, which is fun.
Then one can ‘hang’ them, but not wherever one wants, e.g. in your living room, but around a
predetermined key, which in this case are street signs and bank notes.
But who wants to hang art around random signs? And the user already knows what content will
be revealed. This is absurd. The key to AR apps is gamification; what content am I going to
unlock? Download the app and see how frustratingly arbitrary the experience is.
A clear case of poor planning at concept level, or perhaps the team learning as they go.

43. • Tate Britain quiz
• Median session
length 1.6mins.
• Majority use once or
twice.
This information was taken from the slideshare below.
People don’t play at the gallery! So try not to design an app that only makes sense to the
museum visitor! Have an option to choose a tour or explore a plan, but make the content
suitable for those at home.
Exponential decline of number of apps still in use as time progresses. A month, the realistic life?
http://www.slideshare.net/elena_culture/a-look-at-how-users-engage-with-tate-mobile-apps

44. Audio guides
http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/apps/tate-britain-mobile-guide
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/m/medieval-and-renaissance-galleries-guide-app/
Bearing in mind people view at home, here are two audio guides. One, Tate Britain’s, is much
better (albeit also much newer) for several reasons.
The Tate guide is a lot simpler. The main nav is simply a timeline. Within each date, there are
works to explore, audio and some video. There are other parts of the nav that allow one to look
at gallery views and other info for the physical visitor. Once again, KISS wins.
The V&A guide is very much rooted in the galleries, which seems arbitrary. The audio isn’t as
engaging or varied.

45. The V&A have worked with Mag+ for some of their apps. Mag+ was the first app build software,
developed by Bonnier magazine group and BERG (London agency). They built the famous
PopSci+, the app version of Popular Science magazine, which was demoed by Steve Jobs on
release of the iPad in April 2010.
Partners in the UK include Incisive, which was set up by the team that published the British
Journal of Photography, which has been available on the iPad since 2011, and on the iPhone
from last year.
Mag+ - transforms indesign into a magazine app. Very much publishing. The calendar app for the
V&A was their first. It looks good and works well, though there have been some issues with later
versions downloading properly into newsstand.
One bonus is that this calendar app can be used in the museum on displays to show what’s on.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/v/apps/

46. Interesting to note that V&A runs app workshops for parents, too. Not sure
about price point but perhaps a good way to ensure continued engagement on a
number of levels.

47. MoMA has a hosted app – basically their mobile site . It works well though can
obviously be a little slower than native apps as some elements load up.
http://www.moma.org/explore/mobile/index

48. A final mention, for Grayson Perry’s, The Vanity of Small Differences. This app is £1.99,
which I think is a safe price point.
Great audio from Perry. As he mentions various aspects of each tapestry the artwork is
zoomed in on.
When you first open the app it isn’t that clear where the value is, but once you realise
it’s content from the artist and his commentary on his influences, I think the value is
there. Being bold enough to do this at a price point is commendable.
Check it out: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/grayson-perry-vanity-small/id655623697

49. A final slide from the slideshare below. The analysis one needs to do before, during and after
app development is sizeable. So make sure you’re ready. When you are, keep it simple and only
engage if you have a great concept that can be brought to fruition. Remember, the web is
cheaper and more scalable than the app, so perhaps social or a responsive site should be target
number one?
http://www.slideshare.net/elena_culture/a-look-at-how-users-engage-with-tate-mobile-apps

50. •
•
•
•
•
Sort that website
Use social..
..if that’s what it takes to make more money
THEN explore how you can have fun
BUT don’t forget about the room at the top.
Openness is the first step.