Sharing stories in every museum worldwide: this is what our new platform does

Guide-ID exists to unlock stories. Whether they’re about culture, art, or nature, we give objects and spaces a voice, helping people to listen and expand knowledge. That’s why we’ve created the world’s easiest audio guide, so that people can discover the bigger picture beyond the visual world – without limiting technologies or unnecessary distractions.

All these stories have been shared through our current platform, which also functions as a huge data store. We’ve looked at this data, and then gone back and looked again and again and again. On the basis of this analysis, we developed a new platform. An initial – admittedly very modest – version of this is now online. However, it has enormous potential We really think we can provide the whole market with an awesome opportunity to tell stories that both inform and amaze visitors.

Podcatcher

First, back to basics: our aim is to help every museum, wherever in the world, to share their stories without any unnecessary distractions. To achieve this, our in-house team develops technology that’s easy to use and actually works. No fancy gadgets, just happy museum visitors. We’re very happy with the feedback we get from visitors about the Podcatcher. Almost everyone who uses the Podcatcher is impressed by its simplicity. Visitors can focus entirely on the exhibition, and the Podcatcher provides automatic support by telling a fantastic story. Free of distractions, visitors can use their eyes for what they’re meant to do: enjoying the beautiful exhibits and the building. So far, so good.

What museums did have lots of questions about was how the stories would be produced. Who writes the texts? Who takes care of translating? Who does the filming? Who provides the voiceover? How long will it all take? And most important of all: what will it all cost? After all, content is precious and fleeting, and urgent edits are nothing out of the ordinary. Museums often tell us: ‘We’ll start with just one language and take it from there.’ We thought this was a missed opportunity, so we started looking at how we could do things differently. And we found a solution: artificial intelligence (‘AI’ for short).

AI

Several of our customers now ask us for audio guides with computer-generated audio. I can hear you thinking: a computer... really? But I don’t mean one of those ridiculous robotic voices. In fact, visitors don’t realize it’s not a human voice. Comparing usage behaviour, we found almost no difference in listening behaviour between visitors who listened to human voices or computer-generated voices. And the same picture emerges from the questions we asked visitors at trials hosted by our customers. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. But for now, AI has the upper hand. This means that museums can quickly produce audio tours by simply uploading the texts onto our platform. A few minutes later, the audio is available to all visitors. There’s no more waiting, almost no costs, and – more importantly – no massive project to manage with endless studios and voices.

Of course, I’m talking about simple content for those with a low (i.e. zero J) budget; content that’s ready to go and won’t leave visitors disappointed. But if you want to go all out with various storylines, music, dialogues, and more, you can call on the content creators in our network. They make the most wonderful productions.

Translation

The next step is to use AI to translate. We want to share as many stories as possible. The quickest way to do so is to add lots of languages, so that visitors can listen on their own. This step is a bit more complicated, but we’re on the right track. I hope we’ll be able to offer translations to all our customers before the end of the year. Just imagine: simply type and upload a text, and the content is then instantly available for all visitors as an audio in five languages, accessible on a smartphone or Podcatcher. It couldn’t be easier.

Affordable solution

These days, museum budgets don’t stretch very far. We think we can offer an affordable solution with this tool. After all, if you’re a museum, you want everyone to be able to visit you. Inclusiveness starts with something as simple as a multilingual audio guide.

After budget-balancing comes the next big challenge: content creation. And this is yet another barrier we want to remove with our upgraded platform. Go and discover for yourself. See how visitors react. This fantastic technology is a tiny investment, but it enables you to go on a whole adventure with Guide-ID.

If you’re a museum employee or content creator, I understand that this may be a controversial topic. That’s why I invite everyone to give it a try and experience it for themselves. In any case, I’m always open for a chat. If you want to try it for yourself or have ideas on how to make the product even better, please get in touch with me.