Create a digital, personal tour guide for the outdoor area of the Hearst Castle.
Result
A downloadable mobile app on iOS and Android, which are location-aware, and narrated by Hearst Castle’s Chief Historian.
Description
The Hearst Castle project was the very beginning of a grand journey. It was the first project we pitched commercially after the epiphany in South America (Story for relevance). When we initially met with Hoyt Fields, the Museum Director, he was ecstatic. It was exactly what he was looking to do, and from day 1 he was the ultimate project champion. We searched the onsite library for design inspiration and audio recordings of William Randolph Hearst’s guests at the Castle. We interviewed Victoria Kaster, Chief Historian, and the voice and written word of the app. The Hearst Castle app included many firsts for us in user experience, design, and development. Most notably was the ability to hold the device up to your ear to automatically play audio, privately out of the earpiece. At that point, we had never seen another app provide that kind of functionality. Testing the app with real visitors would be tricky because there wasn’t any WiFi up at the Castle. We came up with the idea to set up a table at the visitor center at the bottom of the hill, which did have WiFi, and provide free souvenirs in exchange for feedback on the app. We installed the app on visitors’ devices and send them on their way. Although not every visitor reported back, this still proved to a be a successful way to gather feedback.
Upon launching the app, it was almost immediately featured on the front page of the App Store and we were beyond excited. To date, the Hearst Castle app has about 150,000 downloads, and is one of our most successful projects. A large part of that success (we think), is due to effective marketing. Hoyt and the administration at the time were very supportive of marketing the app to visitors, so we designed large stand-up banners, bus banners, a widget for the website, and included a QR code download link on all printed maps.
After the Hearst Castle app had been live for about a year, we developed the first museum experience on Google Glass (R.I.P.). Limitations of technology/hardware aside, the application of it was truly awesome. Look at an object, and tap to hear information about it. It was really that simple!
My Roles
Design, prototyping, user testing, quality assurance
