Open Forum

I would love to hear about the different virtual tours and technology different people are using and hear your reviews. We are using Matterport. 

Things I would love to know:

1. Are virtual tours new to your museum and how is your audience responding? 
2. How long do you plan to keep each tour live? 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? Indefinitely?
3. What is your review of the platform you are using. Pros and cons.

Thank you for your time,
Kristen


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Kristen Duncan
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Oklahoma State University Museum of Art
Stillwater OK
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Dear Kristen, 
we are planning on leaving the tours indefinitely for now. We allow visitors to navigate on their own but we also record on Zoom guided tours fro schools as well as facilitate them live. One of the issues with Matterport is that it can be  a little wonky if the buttons or geopoints are not precise.  Thus far it has been a great tool to engage folks with.
We offer special tours for members with our chief curator through the app as well.

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Miriam Machado
CURATOR OF EDUCATION
Frost Art Museum
Florida International University
3053481808




Miami FL
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-30-2020 04:04 PM
From: Kristen Duncan
Subject: Virtual Tour through Matterport Technology

I would love to hear about the different virtual tours and technology different people are using and hear your reviews. We are using Matterport.

Things I would love to know:

1. Are virtual tours new to your museum and how is your audience responding?
2. How long do you plan to keep each tour live? 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? Indefinitely?
3. What is your review of the platform you are using. Pros and cons.

Thank you for your time,
Kristen


------------------------------
Kristen Duncan
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Oklahoma State University Museum of Art
Stillwater OK
------------------------------

Hello Kristen, 

We also use the Matterport platform for our museum. We originally began with ArtSteps, which was a free platform for building VR exhibitions, however, the design of the platform was very similar to Minecraft and thus was not suitable for our needs. However, I still utilize our Artsteps platform to teach students exhibition design. They enjoy it because of its similarities to video games. 

As for the Matterport platform, we really like the design of it, as it allows visitors to feel like they are in the actual museum. I do wish the mattertags had an invisible option but still allowing visitors to hover over a particular label or object to read more about the piece. It worked at first but then after an update, that option was no longer available.

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Winoka Yepa
Director of Museum Education
Museum of Contemporary Native Arts
Santa Fe NM
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-30-2020 04:04 PM
From: Kristen Duncan
Subject: Virtual Tour through Matterport Technology

I would love to hear about the different virtual tours and technology different people are using and hear your reviews. We are using Matterport.

Things I would love to know:

1. Are virtual tours new to your museum and how is your audience responding?
2. How long do you plan to keep each tour live? 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? Indefinitely?
3. What is your review of the platform you are using. Pros and cons.

Thank you for your time,
Kristen


------------------------------
Kristen Duncan
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Oklahoma State University Museum of Art
Stillwater OK
------------------------------

Hi Kristen,

At our museum, we have found great success with Matterport as our virtual tour platform. When we closed to the public in mid-March, it was at the tail-end of our exhibition cycle, and we were not quite sure how to proceed with our two upcoming exhibitions that were to be installed in the summer. We first attempted to capture the outgoing exhibition with Kuula, but I found that the picture quality was hazy and the navigation was not intuitive. Luckily, we discovered Matterport soon after and have since used it to capture not only the new exhibitions but the entire museum grounds, including on-display Permanent Collections and Sculpture Garden.

This was the first virtual tour capture that our museum has done, and our audience has shown appreciation for the experience, which nearly replicates the act of walking through the museum in-person. Where I have found it to be particularly helpful is as a platform for exhibition tours over Zoom, as it's super easy to navigate as the docent and those viewing can go back in themselves with the link afterwards. As for longevity, we intend to keep models of outgoing exhibitions archived on our website for public access, while we will keep the main, current full-museum experience (what we are calling "Virtual Visit") fully available (even after reopening in 2021) with the updated exhibitions filled in.  

Pros of Matterport: Picture quality, ease of implementation of media, intuitive navigation, useful statistics dashboard, helpful customer service

Cons of Matterport: We did deal with some issues of the camera locating its own position within the space (possibly hardware related)



The WENDE MUSEUM VIRTUAL VISIT can be viewed here: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=nt1CQhsq4X5

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Michael Balot-Garza
Education Manager
Wende Museum and Archive of the Cold War
Culver City CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-30-2020 04:04 PM
From: Kristen Duncan
Subject: Virtual Tour through Matterport Technology

I would love to hear about the different virtual tours and technology different people are using and hear your reviews. We are using Matterport.

Things I would love to know:

1. Are virtual tours new to your museum and how is your audience responding?
2. How long do you plan to keep each tour live? 1 year? 2 years? 5 years? Indefinitely?
3. What is your review of the platform you are using. Pros and cons.

Thank you for your time,
Kristen


------------------------------
Kristen Duncan
Marketing & Communications Specialist
Oklahoma State University Museum of Art
Stillwater OK
------------------------------