Auto-rotate proved more confusing than anything else

Yes, the image above is supposed to be confusing. It’s one of the lessons learned from collecting feedback and tracking events on the TAP iPod tour for Sacred Spain. Patrons didn’t quite realize that as they interacted with the tour, we were secretly shooting off messages to a server.  We tracked everything from incorrect codes to device rotations.  All in all we collected over a quarter million events.  Almost half of those events were rotations of the application layout.  We heard back from people that they were “catching up with the rotations”.  Based on this we have decided to flat remove any rotation from the next tour. Everything will be in portrait mode with the exception of video playback.

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Filed under: Technology

As publicized on the exhibition web site and in IMA’s Previews Magazine, we will be offering an iPod Touch driven multimedia tour of our exhibition, Sacred Spain, called “TAP into Sacred Spain”.  The software development side of TAP is mostly complete.  Now the work primarily lies in the hands of the content creators.  TAP’s software design is somewhat interesting in itself.  The content creators actually manage the tour content in a Drupal powered web site.  We can export the tour and all associated media from the site as a plugin for the iPhone application.  We developed an XMLSchema, TourML (pronouced “turmoil”), in which we conform to.  The Dallas Museum of Art is actually using the same format to drive a tour that is not a native iPhone app, but rather a mobile aware web site.  They have an excellent video podcast which describes this.  You can find out more about this collaboration and more by visiting the MuseumMobile Wiki.

I’m going to let the images do most the talking, but please note that none of the design or content is completely finalized below. Read the rest of this entry »

Filed under: Exhibitions, New Media, Technology