Abstract

Modern museums provide visitors with mobile, context-aware information and guidance systems. Unfortunately, these systems often suffer from several technological drawbacks: expensive infrastructure, complex maintenance and content modification, difficult to learn user interfaces, manual location specification requirements, etc. Visitors have to rent, learn, carry and return yet another mobile device. On the other hand, most modern nomadics already own high-performance mobile devices: smart-phones. But acceptance to install museum software on a personal device is rather limited. In this paper, a novel mobile, context-aware museum information system is introduced that runs on the visitors’ mobile phones without any prior installation. We outline the technical principles of the underlying Medient infrastructure and present HolstenTour as an example service instantiation for the famous Museum Holstentor in Luebeck, Germany.