Culture Index exists to catalog cultural institutions online, and highlight the best practices that inspire us.
Launching with a focus on museums and building from there, we are a resource for both research and discovery. Browse information about online communications, and discover ideas with examples of what’s possible for cultural institutions in the digital space.
As a community project facilitated by Base, we invite you to use and contribute to this growing resource.
“The population has stopped distinguishing between the digital as a mediation of the physical and is instead learning to appreciate the ability to weave effortlessly in and out of immersive and hybrid formats.”
There are many effective approaches to visitor guides, but today two are most popular:
• Native mobile apps
• Progressive web apps
Building on these, we’ll illustrate some other, important best practices.
Next to physical guides, Rijks offers digital, celebrity-hosted museum tours.
Using the online web app Snapguide, visitors follow a celebrity’s personal commentary throughout the museum.
• Makes art more approachable
• Represents diverse cultural backgrounds
• Each tour is unique in content and character
• Invites visitors to share on social and spread the word
• No downloads necessary—Snapguide is a progressive web app
Next to physical guides, Momu provides visitors with online guides via QR codes.
With a frictionless templated web solution, staff use a combination of text, audio, and visual information to easily create new guides for each exhibition.
• Easy to use once set up
• Coherent and consistent with overall brand identity
• Access to museum floor plan
• No download necessary—Momu Tours is a progressive web app
Whitney’s website offers easy access to all their audio-only guides.
With a clear commitment to audio-only content, they guide viewers through the museum while allowing a visual focus on the art itself.
• Simple, accessible user interface
• Designed to move visitors’ eyes away from their phone screens ASAP
• Includes narration by artists
• Transcript available if desired
Next to their native app, The British Museum posts all audio guides on Soundcloud.
This offers users a native app experience, without having to download something new. The same experience could be offered through Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
• Simple, low effort option to make audio guides more accessible
• Visitors get a native app experience without a new download
• Using existing apps offers familiar user interface
Many larger museums offer native apps with way-finding, visitor guides and ticketing—but they’re costly to maintain and unappealing to download.
• Web apps make online guides easy and accessible.
• Audio guides free visitors to focus on the visual artwork.
• Posting tracks to existing platforms (i.e. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc.) offer an easy native app experience.