The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Revolution for Museums

More and more visitors are relying on their own devices to visit a museum.

But is this a long-term shift or a short-term solution caused by the pandemic?

This is the question Tim Deakin asked himself in the article titled "What does the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution mean for museums?", which I picked up in order to share his reflections with you.

As already noted in this article, the COVID-19 crisis forced museums and galleries around the world to rethink their visit experiences online, relying on virtual tours, interactive applications and remote visits to attract museum fans and keep them engaged with their favorite cultural institutions.

So, when they reopened their doors in the summer of 2020, many institutions improved their XR reality, that is, all the combined real and virtual environments and human-machine interactions generated by technology. The savviest institutions immediately realized that creating on-site AR (augmented reality) experiences could allow users to get more out of their visit and, at the same time, provide high-quality material for remote enjoyment.

BYOD maximizes accessibility

Let's be clear: the shift toward more XR-driven museum experiences didn't start with the pandemic. For years now we've seen a growing number of museums expand their virtual services and create cutting-edge digital experiences for visitors.

And yet the XR phenomenon is now unfolding within a broader trend: "Bring Your Own Devices", or BYOD. Starting out as a workplace movement, "Bring your own device" encourages organizations and venues to shift the responsibility of providing devices onto their staff or their visitors.

In an office environment, this means that employers allow their staff to use the devices they are already familiar with.

In museums, it means creating XR experiences tailored for use on visitors' smartphones and tablets.

But how realistic is it to expect workable, engaging VR and AR experiences that run on an average smartphone? Is the technology up to the task?

And, more importantly, are museums?

BYOD: the best experiences for visitors using their own devices

As mentioned, BYOD XR experiences are nothing new in museum settings. Many institutions around the world spent much of last year developing virtual experiences for their audiences to enjoy from home.

One example is the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, whose virtual tour Crossing Lines allowed visitors to navigate a 3D virtual space with recommended works highlighted and a full audio guide.

Other VR experiences designed to get people through lockdown involved user contributions, such as the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb: this not only let users explore virtual galleries, but also encouraged them to share their own experiences and memories.

On a larger scale, Chile 360° gave users the chance to explore some of Chile's most popular sites as a whole, including the Easter Island statues, the European Southern Observatory and the Atacama Desert. The app was developed specifically for use on iOS and Android devices (to better understand this choice, read Native apps or hybrid apps? Differences, advantages and disadvantages).

So the question may not be whether museums are capable of delivering BYOD experiences, but whether there will still be demand for them in a post-pandemic museum world.

Museums will need to consider practical issues linked to BYOD

Museums may have succeeded in delivering virtual lockdown experiences for visitors, but that doesn't necessarily mean that large-scale BYOD exhibitions will be guaranteed. There is a clear difference in scale between the practical, necessary virtual tours created during lockdown, and the ambitious, large-scale VR experiences we were seeing before the pandemic hit.

Take the Tate Modern in London as an example. In 2017, the British museum launched a VR exhibition alongside their much-publicized Modigliani retrospective. Visitors were able to enter a complete 3D replica of the artist's Parisian studio. Using the real studio space as a model, the museum created a faithful replica of what the space would have looked like a century earlier.

This kind of technical feat is unlikely to be seen on an average smartphone anytime soon, and once visitors return to the museum space itself for their dose of XR, issues such as bandwidth will need to be taken into account. So, even if museums are not required to invest in hardware to digitize their exhibitions, they will still need to make sure they have the necessary connectivity.

AR thrives under BYOD, VR may still struggle

Where BYOD truly thrives is in AR. For several years now, we've seen examples of AR using smartphone technology with great success, both inside and outside the museum sector. Just look at Astra Make Up, the famous made-in-Italy brand that lets customers test its products directly through their smartphone by displaying a preview of their own made-up face.

As the name suggests, augmented reality involves adding to or altering the current environment, rather than creating an entirely new environment to explore, as is the case with VR. Adapting this technology to fit the capabilities of the average smartphone is a far more realistic goal than creating a fully realized VR experience.

VR, on the other hand, doesn't lend itself easily to the BYOD movement. For it to flourish in the long term, we'll need to see significant advances in smartphone capabilities, or go back to using rented hardware (which I wouldn't recommend in the long run).

However, in a post-COVID society, in which most (all) museum institutions will have to deal with empty coffers, why not focus energy on educating the tourist while waiting to have them experience your venue live, encouraging them to visit?

The project Sensi: Musei senza barriere launched in 2015, managed to transform the visit experience of the Museums of the Province of Belluno into a journey through the artworks, comfortably from home.

And that's not all. Thanks to beacon technology, it is possible to guide people along themed routes or leave them free to visit your museum without constraints through proximity sensors that interact with visitors' smartphones (we talked about it in this article).

Technology is important, but experience is what ultimately matters most.