I have decided to start writing a blog to put down on digital paper some of my ideas, and even ramblings, that do not have anything much to do with the position I hold currently. This is because it is a shame that these ideas go nowhere and disappear in a puff of logic. Hopefully by doing this I can share ideas and maybe get a discussion going, or even give someone an idea that they can implement or make better. But it is mostly for me just to chat rubbish. I do have another selfish reason for this also, as I will enlighten you with when I get to my first idea.
Firstly though, I would like to say that I have these thoughts of creation as that is my job. I currently hold the job title graphic designer/creative media, which basically means I come up with ideas and do my best to see them to fruition. Whether this be in the form of print or digital, static imagery or film, I do my best to market the company I work for. I also like many other things to get the mind going, like problem solving and contemplating life, the universe and everything. Among all these likes is the subject history, but not the boring stuff, I like it mostly for the stories of people in the past. What they had to go through, why a specific pot was made the way it was due to the hardships or creativity of the time, that sort of thing.
Yes, it is impressive when you look at all those old bits and bobs when walking around a museum but in this day in age it gets a bit too much. I have visited two museums recently and I have had two very different experiences, though both enjoyable. Firstly, I visited the Maritime Museum in Falmouth. Knowing it was small and because of the fact I was on a weeklong holiday, so I had a lot of time on my hands, I used that time to slowly go around and read all the cards. Though I do have to admit I only did this in the Titanic segment because as I have said before, things themselves do not interest me, I prefer people’s stories instead of what a thing is, and in the Maritime Museum those many things are boats. The point is I had all the time in the world but normally I do not.
The week after I visited the museum in Bristol and had a very different experience which made me come up with what I thought was an interesting idea. I was on a day trip and the museum was far bigger with more of a variety of different things at my intellectual disposal, which means I had less time to read all the information about the many things that caught my eye, so I started skipping stuff. The change of pace did not let me stumble upon a golden nugget of information that my weeklong holiday pace let me do. The effort of reading became off putting and I thought this may be the way it is heading anyway. I know a museum is a place to slow down and smell the cheese, but could it be changing as the young whipper-snappers start to take over? Afterward this got me thinking.
What if I did not have to read the information. What if I could just click a button and listen to the information? Would I be more inclined to learn about a specific museum piece rather than walk passed it if I could listen to the information? Because you know it takes time and effort to read. What if I could listen to the information on a device I thought?
Last year I went to Cheddar Gorge and they gave out this cumbersome and clunky device to the visitors where we had to press in a sequence of numerical buttons to match the numbers of the thing we wanted the information on, extremely tiresome also. I am pretty sure that old 1980’s phones worked better and had much better sound quality. But they must have invested money into these archaic machines and probably wanted to get their monies worth before moving on.
Now what if the device is something you already carry? Like a smart phone! Just imagine an app which allows you to walk into a museum and it knows what museum you are in because it is using the geolocation on your phone. Now it knows what information you need or which recordings you may want to hear. Just picture tiny QR codes by the pieces in the museum which you can scan and then it automatically starts playing the recorded audio and you listen to it through your headphones. Quick and easy!
I started to write this blog and realised that I have not looked to see if this kind of thing exists already… it does. But I am not disappointed. It just means someone had the same idea which means it must be a good one. I suppose it just has not caught on yet and made its home in all museums. I believe one day it may well be commonplace for people to do this. Maybe it could be done with barcodes and items in stores which then give you reviews or quality checks, or maybe we spend too much time shopping as it is.
Maybe I have too much time on my hands?