720 years of history in an app: Cantiere Creativo transforms the visit experience at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence

Museum apps are spreading in Italy too, and Florence, one of the most famous tourist destinations in the world, could hardly stay out of it. Cantiere Creativo had the chance to play a leading role in this transformation with one of the city's most prestigious cultural institutions: the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. Already our client, last year it asked us to design and develop an app able to fully support the millions of tourists who visit the Baptistery, Brunelleschi’s Dome, Giotto’s Bell Tower, the Cathedral and the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo every year.

The app, for which we also handled design, usability, development and the connection to the ministry's artwork data, managed to:

• showcase the 720 years of history held in the museum;
• tell the story of the 750 artworks on display in the best possible way;
• enrich the museum visit experience;
• offer 2 visit modes: on-site and virtual

The goal was to build a genuinely useful app, with many benefits for both the museum and the visitor.

The museum can:

• personalize the visit experience;
• extend it in time and space;
• provide engaging, even interactive, content that makes the visit memorable;
• monitor visitor activity in real time;
• gather useful data and insights to assess curatorial choices;
• identify possible areas for improvement;

The visitor, on the other hand:

• is free to choose what kind of visit to take and how to manage it, because the app “follows” them around the museum;
• is free to discover and experience the museum according to their own interests;
• has the opportunity to immerse themselves in the artwork;

It is certainly no magic wand. It is a tool that uses the most innovative web development technologies for mobile devices, combined with beacons that let users receive detailed information on their device when they are near the artworks or rooms they are visiting. The small, often unreadable labels and displays under the artworks lose their primary informational role. They stay, but for visitors who don't engage with new technologies.

Live visit mode ON OFF

The app relies on beacons, which communicate with mobile devices via Bluetooth, delivering information and always up-to-date multimedia content straight to the phone.

Experiment and validate were the watchwords. To that end, Cantiere Creativo built an interactive prototype to test the app with potential users, verifying that the user interface worked correctly, spotting possible issues and assessing ease of use. A true usability and interaction study, carried out through realistic prototypes.

A section of the prototype showing a single map with proximity detection of an artwork

The app was developed so it can be installed on any mobile device (Android or iOS smartphone or tablet), and an introductory tutorial guides visitors through each of its features.

Alongside development, we needed to create a custom Content Management System that would give the museum curators full autonomy over:

• information management;
• the layout of the rooms and the three floors;
• the placement of artworks within each room;

Content about each artwork, available both in the app and in the corresponding section of the website, is always updated in real time and managed centrally. Another major advantage for the museum.

The CMS used to manage floors, rooms and artwork placement

The app of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence is a must-try. Above all because the museum is stunning! For us at Cantiere Creativo it has been a major challenge, and it isn't over yet. New features are already planned, and soon visitors will be able to take photos of the artworks during their visit and share them on their social channels.

And that's not all: the experience will be extended to all the monuments that are part of the museum: the Dome, Cathedral, Bell Tower and Baptistery, including of course all the artworks they contain.

More developments? Of course, many others can be imagined: for example, collecting data on how much an artwork is appreciated based on the “dwell time” of visitors who stop to admire it, or using the app for check-in at the museum entrance, doing away with paper tickets.

Even if you are not physically at the museum, you can still browse the app and all the content on the artworks on display.