The application allows the visitors to the attraction to become the curators and experience a whole new level.
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) has just released a new app called the ScopifyROM application, which uses QR codes and mobile devices to help visitors to the location to learn a great deal more about what they are seeing than would be possible on the museum signage.
The app has been designed to bring the museum experience up to a brand new and more interesting level.
The app allows any visitor to the museum to act as though they were a digital curator. This is accomplished by providing a number of digital tools (called “scopes” on the app) that give the individual the opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into each of the exhibits. This is meant to help better interest and inform visitors to the museum far beyond what they could discover simply by looking at an artifact and its brief description on related signs.
QR Codes are central to the use of this tool as it allows visitors to scan the specific exhibit to be explored.
By using ScopifyROM, the visitors can scan the QR codes and then focus their attention on the real museum objects before their eyes. They can use the x-ray “scope” on the surface of a skeleton to be able to see how the individual may once have appeared. Symbols on ancient objects can be decoded and translated so that they are readable. A periscope feature allows the user to be able to view tall objects from various perspectives, such as in the case of the dinosaur bones that are far taller than a visitor.
According to the Royal Ontario Museum’s vice president of gallery development, Dan Rahimi, “What we wanted to do here is emphasize discovery.” He went on to say that “What visitors are doing is looking at objects in a new way. We are adding a new dimension to let them scopify or see something else about the object and then they almost draw their own conclusions. We help them by providing the tools but then they do it and they make the discovery and that is what is revolutionary—not the technology it’s the application of it.”
To start, there are 15 exhibits that are supported by the app, each marked with QR codes that are scanned in order to begin the experience through the app.
