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

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

This question was asked by Tim Deakin in his article entitled “What does the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) revolution mean for museums?” which I have taken up for the purpose of sharing his thoughts with you.

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

Thus, when they reopened their doors in the summer of 2020, many institutions enhanced their XR reality, or all the combined real and virtual environments and to human-machine interactions generated by the technology. The savvy institutions quickly realized that creating AR (augmented reality) experiences on-site could enable 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 museum experiences did not begin with the pandemic. For years now, we have seen an increase in the number of museums expanding their virtual services and creating cutting-edge digital experiences for visitors.

Yet the XR phenomenon is emerging today within a broader trend: “Bring Your Own Devices,” or BYOD. Started as a workplace movement, “Bring Your Own Device” encourages organizations and establishments to pass the responsibility of providing devices to their staff or visitors.

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

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

But how realistic is it to expect feasible and immersive VR and AR experiences that work on an average smartphone? Is the technology up to the task?

More importantly, are museums?

BYOD: the best experiences for visitors using their own devices

As mentioned, BYOD XR experiences are not unheard of in museum environments. Many venues around the world have spent much of the past year developing virtual experiences for their audiences to enjoy from home.

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

Other VR experiences to get off the block involved user contributions, such as the Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb: this not only allowed users to explore virtual galleries, but also encouraged them to share their experiences and memories.

On a larger scale, Chile 360° gave users the ability to explore some of the most popular sites in Chile 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 on Native apps or hybrid apps? Differences, advantages and disadvantages ).

The question then is perhaps not whether museums are able to provide BYOD experiences, but whether there will still be a demand for them in a post-pandemic museum world.

Museums will need to consider practical issues related to BYOD

Museums may have succeeded in providing virtual lockdown experiences for visitors, but that does not necessarily mean that large-scale BYOD exhibitions will be guaranteed. There is a distinct difference in scale between the practical and necessary virtual tours created during lockdown, and the ambitious large-scale VR experiences we were seeing before the pandemic struck.

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

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

AR thrives under BYOD, VR can still struggle

Where BYOD really thrives is in AR. For several years now, we have seen examples of AR using smartphone technology with great success, both inside and outside the museum sector. One only has to look at Astra Make Up, the famous made-in-Italy brand that offers the ability to test its products directly through the smartphone by viewing apreview of one’s own made-up face.

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

VR, on the other hand, does not lend itself easily to the BYOD movement. For it to flourish in the long run, we will have to see significant advances in smartphone capabilities, or return to the use of rental hardware (which I do not recommend in the long run).

However, in a post-COVID society, in which most (all) of the museum facilities will have to contend with empty coffers, why not focus your energies with the purpose of educating the expectant tourist about your reality live by stimulating them to visit?

The Project. Senses: Museums without Barriers born in 2015, has succeeded in transforming the experience of visiting the Museums of the Province of Belluno into a journey among the works, from the comfort of one’s own home.

Not only that. Thanks to beacon technology, you can guide people on themed tours or let them visit your museum unconstrained through proximity sensors that interact with visitors’ smartphones (we talked about this in this article).

Technology is important, but it is the experience that actually matters in the end.