Self initiated concept
Mona stands for:
Museums, the Objects displayed and the Narratives that make them exciting.
Mona stands for:
Museums, the Objects displayed and the Narratives that make them exciting.
MONA is a platform for storytelling inside museums all over the world - to make visitor experiences more personalized, entertaining and sustainable.
Creative story tellers are invited to use our present’s most exciting material - our history, science, arts and culture - and create inspiring and entertaining stories around it as interactive audio guides. These guides are available on the Mona App, which offers a consistent user experience for all museums.
1. Dilemma
The visitors’ diverse needs
People visit museums to enjoy art and/ or the stories hidden in history. To be inspired and/ or educated. But they have diverse backgrounds, speak many languages and have various education levels. Hence different things are relevant to them.
The museums’ challenge
It is the museums’ job to collect, preserve and research. But they are also supposed to educate, inspire and entertain visitors. Yet, museum’s have limited resources and the curators can't respond to every visitors specific needs.
The visitor experience
As a result, visitors often leave a museum, thinking they didn’t make most of their visit due to an overload of impressions and information. If only someone could take them by the hand and guide them to those things, that are relevant to them…
Museum Apps are no solution!
Museums have realised that the digital space gives them more opportunities to tell their stories and personalise exhibitions. And now every museum is releasing its own app, filled with audio guides and special features. But that is inefficient and not even in the visitors’ interest!
Typical museum app:
> Expensive development
> Expensive maintenance
> No Start-Up mentality (no constant improvement after release)
> Inconsistent User Experience (always the same stuff in different UI)
> Download barrier due to expected single use
> Even more work for museums to provide quality content
Typical museum app:
> Expensive development
> Expensive maintenance
> No Start-Up mentality (no constant improvement after release)
> Inconsistent User Experience (always the same stuff in different UI)
> Download barrier due to expected single use
> Even more work for museums to provide quality content
Museum platforms add to the dilemma
Platforms like Smartify or Vizgu are already trying to unify museum apps.
But providing the technical environment doesn’t tackle the core challenge, which the museum’s are still left with: Create and maintain a great variety of outstanding content.
A great variety of well produced, edutaining content is already being created everyday on platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, Blinkist and many others.
Independent content creators
A great variety of well produced, edutaining content is already being created everyday on platforms like YouTube, Spotify, Soundcloud, Blinkist and many others. And it gets a lot of traction! Can't we transport that quality of audio-visual storytelling into museums? I would love to enter a museum, open an app and have one of my favourite influencers give me a tour. Wouldn't you?
2. Mission
3. Concept
Two sided market
I believe that good content doesn't have to be for free. And I believe that content creators will need an incentive. Content creators will team up with museums to create edutaining audio tours which will be purchasable in the Mona App.
The pricing has to be worked out. It may be a combination of pay what you want and a subscription model. In any case the profit will be split between Creators, Museums and Mona.
Storytelling in museums
Imagine a Museum as a space full of information. Isolated information is just information. And visitors often leave a museum, thinking they didn’t make most of their visit due to an overload of impressions and information.
Understanding how things are connected, is knowledge. And the objects in Museums are connected in many ways.
A storyline reduces complexity and helps to understand. An audio guide that is able to navigate through the museum, can tell a story that includes several Objects.
These stories can be informative, entertaining, exciting and even funny.
They can be made for diverse target audiences and attract people who would have never considered visiting a museum. With several storylines, the museum can also meet the many needs of diverse visitors.
4. User Experience Design
Museums
> find Museums
> Museum Details
> Objects inside a Museum
> Tours inside a Museum
Optional:
> Buy Tickets
> Event Promotion
> Suggestions
> Reviews
Objects
> Scan objects to see
additional information
additional information
> Find famous objects all
over the world
over the world
> Free audio content
> free/ non-free additional content (AR/VR, media…)
> Tour suggestions
Tours
> Find Tours all over the world
> Find Tours inside specific Museums
> Filters
> Preferences (Suggestions)
> Tour Reviews
Tours in Detail
> Object = Chapter
> Navigation from
object to object
object to object
> Additional content
(AR/VR, media, …)
(AR/VR, media, …)
> Group tours
> Rate the Tour
5. Market and Opportunities
107 M visitors in the world’s 20 most visited Museums in 2019
14 M visitors in Vienna’s top 10 museums in 2019
- non of which is part of the world’s top 20
- non of which is part of the world’s top 20
Additionally this concept falls completely in line with the Megatrend
„New Education“.
„New Education“.
What now?
I started this project just for myself and soon felt that it could become a startup. However so far I haven't found partners to kick it off with... if you like the idea, drop me a message: gmb@brennwald.de