No abstract

This paper explores how chatbots can offer opportunities for museums and galleries in engaging their audiences through recent developments, and through a case study approach focusing on the design and implementation of an audience development pilot in Milan involving four historic house museums (Case Museo di Milano). The pilot aimed to find new and interesting ways to engage teenagers in visiting these museums through visualising narrative using a convergence of chatbot technology and gamification.

The paper discusses the experience of producing and distributing an iPhone app for promotion of the Maltese Cultural Heritage on behalf of the Malta Tourism Authority. Thanks to its position at the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta has been a crossroads of civilisations whose traces are still visible today, leaving a particularly rich and varied cultural heritage, from megalithic temples to baroque palaces and Caravaggio masterpieces. Conveying all these different aspects within a single application, using textual, visual, and audio means, has raised many different issues about the planning and production of cultural content for mobile usage, together with usability aspects regarding design and distribution of a mobile app. In this paper, we outline all of these aspects, focusing on the design and planning strategies for a long-term user commitment and how to evaluate results for cultural mobile applications. We include experience of all the steps of developing a mobile app, information that is of possible benefit to other app developers in the cultural sector.Mobile apps. Usability. App design. Multimedia. Cultural heritage..

This paper explores the growing pervasiveness of forms of participatory innovation in the cultural sector, with a particular focus on the integration of prototyping approaches. Participatory uses of prototyping are underpinning new developments and opportunities for museums and galleries in transforming both internal and public involvement in the co-design of services and engagement. This transformation is illustrated through landscape perspectives and real-world learnings.

No abstract