Vikingship Museum Audioguide App with beacon support

-
This app was developed by Petrus Media together with The Vikingship Museum in Oslo in 2017 and launched the same year. It is still being used at the museum to accommodate thousands of visitors every year.
Development team @ Petrus Media:
Dr. Paul John Leonard graduated from Aberdeen University in 1979 with a degree in engineering science. His publications include 70 journal articles and 15 conference papers. As a senior lecturer, his teaching interests have ranged from software engineering to computational intelligence. He has a special interest in Artificial Intelligence techniques like neural networks and genetic algorithms. In 2016 he left Bath University and joined Petrus Media as a senior developer and is the main developer for the Vikingship Museum App.
Helge Salomonsen is one of the founders of Petrus Media, and has been the main project-manager and tech-support for Petrus Medias museum customers since the start of the company. He has a Bachelor in applied computer technology from Oslo Met University. He is the main project manager and UX-designer for the Vikingship Museum App.
Dag Asheim completed his cand.scient degree in informatics from the University of Oslo in 1995. Directly after graduating, he started what was to become Norway's leading Linux and free software company, Linpro. The firm grew from Asheim as the sole employee to a staff of well over 100 persons, before it was sold in 2008. He is one of the owners of Petrus Media and he is the main technical advisor for the development of the Vikingship Museum app.
Marianne Hval is a full stack developer with a specialty in front-end development. Her qualifications include a Bachelor degree in Informatics: Programming and Network from the University of Oslo. She is highly skilled in Angular Framework and Typescript and has developed her skills at all stages of software development including testing, compliance and debugging. She is one of the developers of the Vikingship Museum app. - https://petrusmedia.no/
Vikingship Museum Audioguide App with beacon support
All the viking ships at our museum were ocean going vessels before they were hauled onto land to be used in burial rituals for their wealthy owners. In the burial mounds, archeologists unearthed sceletons, beautiful wood carvings and a diverse range of artifacts from the fascinating world of the vikings.
The Viking Ship Museum at Bygdøy is one of two buildings belonging to the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway. At the Viking Ship Museum are finds from the burials from Tune, Gokstad and Oseberg.
This audioguide app is presented in multiple languages ( English, Norwegian, French, Russian, German and Spanish) and have support for ibeacons. The audience is visitors to the museum, but also users who want to experience the content of the app outside the museum.
The Viking Ship Museum at Bygdøy is one of two buildings belonging to the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, Norway. At the Viking Ship Museum are finds from the burials from Tune, Gokstad and Oseberg.
This audioguide app is presented in multiple languages ( English, Norwegian, French, Russian, German and Spanish) and have support for ibeacons. The audience is visitors to the museum, but also users who want to experience the content of the app outside the museum.
For the Viking Ship Museum at Bygdøy in Oslo Norway, Petrus Media developed an Audio Guide App with maps and beacon support, and we had to take into account a high number of users since the museum has approximately 500,000 visitors a year.
In this app we have solved a lot of the problems regarding beacons and we think we have solved this in a way that puts usability at the center. The app works best on The Viking ship house where you get the full effect of the beacon support and the map. But it also works outside the museum as a standalone Audio Guide App.
The app is designed for Apple iOS and Google Android and is available in the Appstore and Google Play respectively for downloading to users' smartphones. We mounted beacons both inside the museum and outside. We identified the many and different user groups the museum's visitors consist of and developed a beacon solution which at the bottom of the screen and in the map shows suggestions about the object's correct sound file. One of the major challenges was getting this to work on many different devices across operating systems.
User Experience
The app is designed to locate the visitors by use of beacons both inside the museum and outside without any specific action from the user. The visit is facilitated by a map showing all the available Points Of Interest, and suggestions with relevant Point Of Interest -information popping up on the screen, in order to be discovered throughout the visit in the museum.
We developed an audio guide application focused on map and beacon support for indoor geolocation reliable for a high number of visitors. To increase the accessibility, a user-friendly interface was created, centered on beaconing and the map location, also working outside the museum.
App download at Google Play
App download Apple Appstore
In this app we have solved a lot of the problems regarding beacons and we think we have solved this in a way that puts usability at the center. The app works best on The Viking ship house where you get the full effect of the beacon support and the map. But it also works outside the museum as a standalone Audio Guide App.
The app is designed for Apple iOS and Google Android and is available in the Appstore and Google Play respectively for downloading to users' smartphones. We mounted beacons both inside the museum and outside. We identified the many and different user groups the museum's visitors consist of and developed a beacon solution which at the bottom of the screen and in the map shows suggestions about the object's correct sound file. One of the major challenges was getting this to work on many different devices across operating systems.
User Experience
The app is designed to locate the visitors by use of beacons both inside the museum and outside without any specific action from the user. The visit is facilitated by a map showing all the available Points Of Interest, and suggestions with relevant Point Of Interest -information popping up on the screen, in order to be discovered throughout the visit in the museum.
We developed an audio guide application focused on map and beacon support for indoor geolocation reliable for a high number of visitors. To increase the accessibility, a user-friendly interface was created, centered on beaconing and the map location, also working outside the museum.
App download at Google Play
App download Apple Appstore