Good technology is transparent; it’s the content experience that visitors remember.
What they learnt, whether the tour spoke at their level, if they could find what they were looking for quickly, and find more, immerse themselves, concentrate, take something of value away, and enjoy themselves.
You can tell a great tour when you take it. It may have many spoken parts, or a solo voice. It may have videos with the director or interviews with the artist, or show comparable pieces. It may be linear or random access, with many short stops or fewer longer ones. It may be for the visually impaired or the deaf or deafened. In one language or a dozen. Whatever the need, and whatever your budget, we have the experience to create tours tailored to your visitors’ needs and expectations.
We have built multilingual audio and multimedia tours for high profile and smaller museums alike, covering audio, interactive and multimedia tours, and smartphone and tablet apps. And for many audiences: adults, teenagers, children from as young as 4, visitors with access needs or those who have a limited understanding of the language.
Our content philosophy can be summarised as:
- Spend the extra dollar on content – this is what lasts
- Build once, pre-purpose as far as possible, distribute as widely as possible
- Whether it’s ‘just’ the translations or the whole programme, we are here to help
- We offer help clearing IP rights, but you own the tour
Audio Tours
Many people believe that ‘great audio helps you see more clearly’ and the best complement to a visual experience is like radio: pure audio. The imagineear team has decades of experience producing such audio tours for art galleries and small provincial visitor centres, and everything in between; but we have also developed tours in factories and for trade fairs, observatories, cities... Most site challenges can be overcome with careful content design. We can advise on visitor flow, linear vs random access, 1st vs 2nd levels, optimal stop length, route planning and so on.
The tour begins with the script. We listen to your thoughts and generally draft the script. You have sign off and complete control; but we do the heavy lifting of script revisions so you don’t have to. Voices? We have worked with the best; but equally we know how to get the best out of the talented amateur. Studio direction, interviews, location recording, post production, SFX, music? We will do as much or as little as you want.
In some countries it’s essential to have tours available for hearing and sight-impaired visitors to satisfy ADA or Equality Act criteria. We work with specialists to ‘translate’ the tours for these visitors, and can advise on focus groups, best practice, etc.
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Multimedia Tours
Multimedia tours are like television to the audio tour’s radio programme. It is exciting, but more challenging to design pithy and compelling content, and the tour will not automatically be better as a result. We need to direct visitors’ attention in order to give them the confidence to relax. But then you can use multimedia tours to show truly compelling and unique content: watch the artist painting, to show the image before it was cleaned, or show the inspiration or the works that the piece subsequently influenced.
Multimedia tours begin with a storyboard, in place of the script. And it will often make sense to incorporate archive materials. But additional degrees of freedom can also make the job of producing truly compelling content all the harder.
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Apps Tours
Our apps are used in a number of ways. Visitors download apps onto their smartphone or personal device, instead of renting an audio player, so long as it does not take an age to download, and they do not risk paying exorbitant roaming charges for the privilege. Or they are alerted to the app while still at home, and buy it to ‘visit’ the museum virtually. Or they buy an app at the end of the exhibition to keep on their tablet player, instead of buying a traditional catalogue.
We believe that the number of visitors and would-be visitors who would prefer to take and keep the tour on their personal devices will grow. imagineear has partnered with leaders in the field of building and distributing apps across multiple operating systems: iOS, Android and Blackberry. Whatever the objective, we are able to advise and build the app if required.
In order to simplify the app building process, imagineear offers a range of template apps, with full customisation and a limited number of optional features. But anything else is possible – just ask us to quote for bespoke work. We will be able to advise on upfront as well as per month hosting /updating costs, and on when it may be best to offer the app to visitors for free, or for a fee.
All app tours that we build for smartphones can be ported onto the mediaPacker™ or the iPod Touch for onsite rental. Both platforms charge in the imagineear smartCharger™; ask us for when which of these may be the better solution on your site. We can also advise on issues such as theft or shrinkage, onsite charging, hardware and software versioning, and version control, repairs, maintenance and insurances. Anything is possible, and indeed this is part of the problem; and the reason why experienced help is so valuable.
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