While antiquity is something many museums strive to preserve, there’s no reason to do so when it comes to guiding equipment, according to Irish startup ZolkC.
The innovative little 10 person team which works out of the TSSG institute in Waterford is on a mission to bring historical experiences to life using basic mobile technology to enhance what could otherwise be a rather static experience.
“We started by looking at the old audio guides,” ZolkC’s managing director Paul Savage told RCR. Many of those devices haven’t changed since they were first implemented back in the 1960’s.
“We realized, the technology was there to really enhance the experience and bring it to life,” said Savage, describing his firm’s first project, the Battle of Culloden, commissioned by the National Trust for Scotland who wanted to “tell the story with technology.”
The battle itself is a particularly emblematic one, taking place on April 16, 1746 at the close of the Jacobite revolution and causing many Scotts to flee the country, ultimately resulting in the large Scottish diaspora in the US and other parts of the world.
The site, Savage explains, is also particularly well suited to a mobile guide experience because while the battle itself was bloody and vicious, today the site is just a field and needs some extra help to bring events to life.
In order to do this on the Culloden site, ZolkC has enabled a small handheld mobile device with automatic GPS based triggering which tells the story through an earpiece as people wander about the site. Even for the non tech savvy, it’s an easy system to use, requiring no input from the visitor.
That said, ZolkC sees a lot more potential for mobile guides in the future. The firm, which works out of the TSSG institute in Waterford is also involved in new research aimed at examining how mobile phones can be used properly to tell stories at historical or tourist sites using GPS, indoor location technology, augmented reality and multimedia.
The technology is already there, and so is the need. For the technology generation – kids- today, Savage told us, the word museum is often synonymous with “boring” but simply by integrating a bit of mobile technology like interactive quizzes or augmented reality into an outdated system, it’s possible to develop something far more engaging and fun.
The firm is growing fast and now has several sites across the UK and Ireland with plans for a first Canadian site later this year. From there, it could be a small step towards downloadable city guide apps and a whole new world of informative interactivity. After all, it’s not called ‘information’ technology for nothing.
