The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum goes for GVAM to modernize its audio guide service

NEWS


3 March, 2021

The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum goes for GVAM to modernize its audio guide service

Digitalization continues to gain ground in the museum field. In this revolution we are experiencing, the public demands the modernization of services and a new way to connect with museums. In this sense, one of the biggest changes is in the audio guide service. Since its beginning, GVAM has led the technological transformation of guidance systems in large cultural and tourist centres in Spain and Europe. The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has decided to count on us to continue innovating and expanding the solutions that will be offered to visitors over the next 4 years.

Because of the health emergency caused by the COVID-19, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum expects an increase in visitors that prefer to use their own devices, according to the call for tenders. Therefore, the Museum considers this moment as an opportunity to advance in the digitalization of the Museum and to offer its audiences alternatives to non-interactive audio guides.

 

Beyond the traditional audio guides for museums

With an eye on innovation, a joint transformation plan has been designed with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum that covers different aspects of digitalization of the service and its use by the public.

In a staggered manner and in several phases, the following innovations will be developed:

  • Dual application system on loan Smartphones and PWA-type web APPs, which will already be a 100% interactive solution, connected to the Museum’s digital ecosystem and in accordance with the good practices of the industry.
  • Tours and thematic listings to access the museum’s exhibitions: a journey from the 13th to the 20th centuries to discover the great pictorial works of Western painting.
  • Interactive map and other location-based functions in the museum that allow the visitor to move comfortably through the building and locate the pieces of the temporary and permanent exhibitions.
  • Much more interactive content: in addition to the traditional specs of the audio guide such as the keyboard, the newly developed will have other interactive elements to discover hidden content through augmented reality for automatic recognition, animations, etc.
  • Participation and personalization functions: the data and interests of the visitors will be the protagonists in the creation of personalized tours, and their feedback will help to improve the Museum’s programming.
  • Interactive version for children’s audiences between 8 and 12 years old with a variety of narrative, immersive and animated content, as well as gamification elements.
  • Logical layer and accessibility protocols for mobiles that will make the audio guides fully adapted for people with visual disabilities or vision difficulties.
  • Digital solutions on Smartphone for group visits, making this type of visit a hygienic experience enriched with multimedia content.

Progress of Phase I of the project

 

It is an ambitious and complex project that will involve several months of work with the the following goal in mind: to recover tourism by the second half of 2021. In the first phase, the changes will be more formal, so that the service to the public is not interrupted while working on the new infrastructure that will support the new components and allow to extract its full potential for the Museum.

In future posts, we will keep you posted on the start of the following phases of the project.

 

A solution supported by a powerful “backend”

In line with these efforts, which will be evident to visitors, the audio guide services will be connected with audience analytics tools such as G-Stats, which allow the visualization of interaction data and characterization of users and the recollection of the visit data (times, locations , interests, interaction, boredom, attraction, and much more …), which will be used by the exploitation tools available to the Museum and its digital marketing department, such as GVAM’s GMarket for the design and implementation of automated marketing campaigns on APPs.

In turbulent moments like these,  museums that bet on the modernization of their services without losing the physical essence of their activity as a building and as a collection of real works will be able to establish a new paradigm of relationship with their public in terms of  valuable experience and the generation of trust and loyalty.

Visit the National Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and enjoy the exhibitions with your audio guide. Get it here!