What is LightPress?
LightPress is an integrated augmented reality platform initially designed for cultural institutions. It enables the quick and easy deployment of scalable, flexible turnkey solutions.
According to research by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the average time spent looking at a piece of art is just 17 seconds! And with the quick consumption habits of the mobile Instagram generation, the problem is increasing.
Museums are looking ways to increase engagement levels especially with the young. Digital media is seen as a key weapon in this fight however much scepticism has been voiced as it means that visitors spend more time looking at their devices rather than looking up at the exhibits.
With LightPresses unique use of Augmented Reality there is the potential for the best of both worlds, deepening the visitor’s engagement with the exhibits, and allowing them to embark on a self directed journey of discovery whilst always looking up!
What makes Light Press Unique?
- Current Augmented Reality Platforms are geared towards marketing. They do not come with a set of ready made functionality designed for museum engagement.
- Museum Collection Management Software: This is usually limited to managing the digital storage of a museums collection. Some allow you to publish content to the web, but none allow visitor experiences or content to be published to augmented reality.
- Bespoke Digital Visitor Engagement Strategies. These are usually bespoke, can be expensive, difficult and slow to update and are often not scalable or transferable.
The Light Press Platform takes from the best of all providing an flexible scalable platform with a modular set of functionalities designed specifically for museum use.
How Does It Work?
Digitised content from the collection is connected via the backend to the Content Management Software.
This gets delivered to the visitor by smartphones and tablets via the cloud. This can form a two way connection with a variety of media and activities allowing visitor metrics and content to flow both ways.
A custom Augmented Reality Content Management System provides the user with an interface to the museum.
The wireframe above shows info points being added to specific parts the painting, these will now appear for the visitor in augmented reality.
Modular Functionality
These lenses can be attached to the ReBlink app in a modular manner, the customer may have as many or as few lenses as they want.
The Lenses:
The Review Lens makes the process of reviewing paintings, and looks at other visitor reviews, a magical one. It also provides key visitor metics to the institution allowing them to assess the popularity of the exhibits.
The X-ray Lens enables the visitor to see through the historical layers of the paintings and learn more about how the works were created.
The Treasure Hunt Lens is a kids focused experience provides a fun gaming experience that requires visitors to look closely at the paintings in order to play.
Applications for Vertical Industries
We are also exploring other lens functionality for other vertical industries.
Educational book Publishing:
A Treasure Hunt Game for retail:
