Cultural institutions are beginning to advance in the modernization of services and processes, with the aim of offering the greatest value to the visitor experience and adapting to the new challenges caused by the post-COVID era.
This week the Fundación MAPFRE, together with GVAM, presents its new intelligent guidance solution, supported by both interactive audio guides and a new Progressive Web Application (PWA) in order to facilitate access to the exhibition content in a simple way and individualized.
Progressive Web Applications or PWAs under GVAM technology allow access to a digital audio guide from any mobile browser and their appearance is fully adapted to the screen. Its most attractive feature for users is that it emulates 100% the intuitive navigation of an App, but without downloads or installations. In this way, with a simple click on the link, button or with a unique access code provided at the entrance of the cultural centers, visitors access the PWA from the browser of their own terminals.
This represents a great step in the digital transformation of audio guides that also includes the physical loan devices that the visitor will have and other tools in the back office of the service. The current situation has become a crucial moment to establish visitor trust-building strategies and sustainable plans that integrate all elements of the service such as ticketing, staff, groups or audio guides.
A pioneering solution for museums and exhibition halls for painting and photography
The solution designed by GVAM solves an old problem of art museums in terms of implementing multimedia guidance systems. As the Prado did in 2018, the Mapfre Foundation is committed to devices with screens and interactive functions. This time, the GVAM solution goes further by including personalization and monitoring functions that allow to know the experience of the visitors both from physical audio guides and from PWAs for mobile phones.
We also face the challenge of supporting a very intense activity in temporary exhibitions, thanks to GVAM’s content management and publishing tools. This work will be carried out, together with the dissemination team of the two Foundation headquarters.
The MAPFRE Foundation headquarters in Madrid has two rooms: the Recoletos 23 room and the Bárbara de Braganza 13 exhibition room. In its more than 1,500 m2, there are exhibitions by established masters of photography and a permanent exhibition with sixty-five five works by Joan Miró and five by Alenxander Calder. For this headquarters, the PWA has texts and phrases in two languages: Spanish and English.
The headquarters in Barcelona called KBr is an exhibition project of continuity, where photography takes center stage. Starting its activity in the new location in the Mapfre Foundation’s Tower, the KBr Photography Center dedicates its scope to artistic photography. For KBr, texts and voice-overs have been developed in three languages: Spanish, English and Catalan.
In both venues, text, images, audios, etc. can be added and configured according to the visitor’s reading comfort, enlarging and reducing the font size or screen zoom. This tool also allows incorporating the necessary accessibility aids so that people with hearing or visual difficulties, and that they can also enjoy the exhibitions. The PWA offers all the information necessary to carry out a satisfactory visit: schedules, programming, information about the entity, multimedia content, texts, audios, etc.
The content adapts and facilitates the navigation of the PWA according to the spaces to visit, updating itself dynamically through an associated content manager.
Likewise, all data on content usage and consumption metrics are recorded anonymously and interpreted in GVAM’s advanced statistics platform. A powerful tool for MAPFRE Foundation as it allows the analysis of the exhibition content itself and the visitor’s interest in each of the exhibitions.
Integration of ticketing systems with the PWA
Another problem solved has been that both the PWAs and the GVAM audio guides can be purchased from the Foundation’s ticketing platform, allowing more direct and easier access than up to now. The content will only be accessible the same day as the ticket reservation and is automatically configured to the exhibitions of the venues to which the visit will be made, among other improvements that will be integrated shortly.
