>Is anyone out there using iPods for audio tours willing to share the 
>pros and cons? Our museum is exploring this for an upcoming, large 
>exhibition.
>
>Were the costs prohibitive? How user friendly were they? 
>Did visitors use them? Did they require a lot of maintenance? How 
>easy was it to design an audio tour?

We're working on a project that allows visitors to listen to music in 
some of our galleries through a personal device with headphones. 
Essentially delivering a bunch of mp3 files to visitors at 
comfortable seating areas. To help determine the implementation, we 
did a round of user testing with an ipod, a PDA, and a tablet PC. We 
worked with Ubiquity Interactive in Vancouver to develop a custom 
interface for the PDA and tablet PC. We had questions about the form 
factor and the interface.

Someone mentioned price before -- we experimented with the ipod mini, 
which is $250/per, the PDA is about $500/per and the tablet PC 
$2k/per. In the final implementation, which isn't museum-wide, just 
in two small galleries, we only need about a dozen devices.

One of the things we realized early on was that because this 
experience was all about the music rather than educational tour 
content, that we needed to deliver it in a device that didn't feel 
like a traditional audio tour - let the design of the device convey 
some of the idea to the visitor that this was a different kind of 
experience. Our hope with the ipod, even though the interface is 
proprietary and there's a small learning curve (depending on the 
audience), that the market success of the ipod would let visitors 
know that this experience was about music.

The interface developed by Ubiquity was identical on the tablet PC 
and the PDA, just larger on the tablet PC (larger graphics & 
typefaces -- just scaled up from the PDA).

We're going to go with the PDA; the ipod came in a *very* close 
second. There was a very high hip and coolness factor to the ipod and 
many people recognized it for what it was. But for people who had 
never used one before, the interface took some getting used to, 
especially how to use the scroll / click wheel and select menu items. 
Also, the screen was small and because we couldn't disable some of 
the menu settings, it was a little harder for visitors to find the 
right content.

The other potential problem is that many of the audio wand companies 
have created 'banks' of chargers and ways to update the content en 
masse. As far as I know, there's no simple way to charge and update 
dozens of ipods at the same time. For us, that wasn't an issue, but 
it's a huge tactical headache when this experience would get scaled 
up. If anyone can point me to a solution, I'd love to know it.

So, all that being said, and even knowing our testing results, I 
think the ipod has incredible potential. It's very easy to get mp3 
files onto the device, easy to create sequential playlists and if 
purchasing, cheaper than traditional audio wands. On the flip side, 
they're easy to steal and have purpose outside of the museum, and 
have an interface that's not quite as compatible with a tour 
experience with specific stops. Some of the audio tour companies are 
adding technologies that allow you to bookmark tour locations 
(Peabody Essex in MA is doing this, I believe) and collect statistics 
about use.

The other thing that has a strong appeal to me is that with the ipod, 
you clearly own your own content. Some other company isn't doing the 
conversion and installation and acquiring the rights to your content.

I'm happy to discuss any of the details of our testing in greater 
detail off the discussion list. Just shoot me an email.

-bw.
-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Bruce Wyman, Director of New Technologies
Denver Art Museum  /  100 W 14th Ave. Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204
office: 720.913.0159  /  fax: 720.913.0002
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