Museum in Hand

In the cavernous halls of museums, you might find dinosaur fossils, video coverage of historic events like the fall of the Berlin Wall and famous paintings—but also a few visitors slumped in corners, napping their discovery time away.

A group of Maryland graduate students hopes to turn those Zzzs into glee with an app full of location-based quizzes, games—including a scoreboard of friends’ results—and other fun tidbits.

“We want to make the whole experience more meaningful and fun,” says Christine Herlihy, a political science doctoral student. “Currently, there are a lot of boring portraits of historical figures… It’s a very static way to view content.”

Called “Flip the Museum,” the team also includes Amir Kashani-Pour, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, and three master’s students: Lianyi Ma and Yiying Xiao in business, and Gaurav Sharma in telecommunications.

The team won a Future of Information Seed Alliance (FIA) Deutsch Seed Grant from the university in December, earning $25,000 to develop a prototype that it’ll present at a public forum on May 6.

The group has worked closely with the Newseum, one of the FIA’s founding partners, to develop an app that meets the D.C. attraction’s challenges.

“Our competition now isn’t other museums—it’s Xbox and Six Flags and their phones,” says Paul Sparrow, senior vice president of broadcasting. “Apps allow us to get them using their phones to interact with the environment they’re in… to look up and engage in a real experience with authentic objects or authentic stories.”

What appealed to him was the customizable nature of the app. While some museums have created similar systems, they’re specific to that venue and its content—and they’re very expensive to make. The “Flip the Museum” group offered a low-cost, scalable template into which museums could drop their own content.

The system relies on beacons placed at each exhibit. As visitors approach, new information or games pop up, and they can also comment on particular exhibits through the app’s social media links. (Stores like Macy’s and Target have been testing this type of technology to offer on-the-spot coupons.) For curators, this provides invaluable data about which parts of the museum interest visitors and what types of questions they have, which can inform future displays.

For educators, it offers a way to make sure students visit all the exhibits they’re supposed to. “You don’t want them to just run through the museum,” Herlihy says. Ultimately, the goal is for teachers to be able to make their own quizzes, too.

Though it’s been a time-consuming side project, both Herlihy and Kashani-Pour were inspired and encouraged by their educator families.

Kashani-Pour’s mother teaches special education in Iran, which meant he was “always aware of people’s different ways of connecting and learning,” he says. Now, he and the team are gearing up to test the app at the Newseum over the summer, and they’re seeking more funding to continue their work.

“It’s a really valuable idea,” Sparrow says. “If we can find a way to make something that’s simple and effective, it could be of great value to many museums around the country and around the world.”

TO SEE THE APP IN ACTION during the team’s final presentation, visit the McKeldin Library Special Events Room (6173) from 10 a.m. to noon May 6.