TIPS Museum automated tour

[kameleon]

I work for a state department that has at least half a dozen museums. We are looking at a low cost (read: free) way to give an automated tour of the sites. Before I go too deep into trying this in PIAF I wanted to ask the community and see if it was feasible or not. Here is what I am thinking:

Have the patron call a special phone number that resides on the PIAF system. Then have prompts to have them enter a number for what museum/site they are at. Beyond this point it would just be "walk this direction"... "turn right in to the room"... etc. Between each direction we could possibly put in a "hit the #insertrandomnumberhere# key to continue". For some sites that have multiple floors and either stairs or elevator we would need a few variations for which way they were going to go up.

Thoughts?

 

[rjaiswal]

How well is cell coverage in the buildings? If you had no cell coverage, then this wouldn't work, unless you provided handsets for the patrons.

Cheapest way I've done this is using some sort of inexpensive MP3 player with over the ear hard headphones (so you can clean them).

This would give the patron a way to pause the program. As a theft deterrent, I would put really gaudy stickers and such on them.

 

[Brian Simmons]

I'm sure it can be done with IVRs. A person would call a number to start and would receive instructions about where to go. Once they arrived at the intended location, there would be a sign to press a number that would put them into the next IVR which would speak the details you want them to hear about that location. Once that is over, then they could press a button to receive directions to the next spot - rinse and repeat.

You could have the IVRs time out and repeat the current message. So if they might hear the educational portion more than once, or they would hear the directions more than once, etc, etc, etc but I don't think that is bad. In fact, hearing the directions more than once might be helpful if they have to walk a long distance between locations.

It might look something like this..... (each line represents an IVR annoucement/level)

Individuals dial 555-1212. ===> "Hello and welcome to ............. to start the tour, please walk.............." [when people get to first location, a sign directs them to to press "1" on their phones]
Individuals press 1 ===> "The diorama in front of you depicts........." blah, blah, blah.... "Please press 1 now to receive directions to the next stop on our tour"
Individuals press 1 ===> "Please turn left out the door and walk..........." [when people get to second location, a sign directs them to to press "2" on their phones]
Individuals press 2 ===> "This artifact came from ............" blah, blah, blah "Please press 2 now to receive directions to the next stop on our tour"
and so on..........

 

[kameleon]

Cell coverage is very good in all of these buildings except maybe one and it is fine if you are on Verizon. But that one you have to have an appointment anyways and they only offer a guided tour so I am not worried about that. No money for mp3 players either.

 

[saladman02]

I tend to agree with lgaetz - there's probably better ways to do this. But I;m definitely intrigued, and have a decade long career designing interactive experiences for a large company with massive theme parks. PM me if you want to tell me more about the project and I'll try to think about it with you.