Interview with Ann Katrin Grube, scientific associate at Kunsthalle Emden, Gemany – one of the first who signed in on our chatbot automation platform to create a chatbased museum guide.
Where have you heard about Helloguide?
“My first encounter was the presentation at the MUSEUM AND THE INTERNET conference in 2017 where the Deutsche Historische Museum introduced the Helloguide chatbot.
During my research for the project “Robots in the Art Mediation”, I saw an advertisement of the Museum der ArbeitHamburg and their chatbot. I experienced the chatbot functionalities as a visitor and definitely enjoyed it. So I recommended it to Kunsthalle Emden.”
What were your experiences with the Chatbot automation platform? What worked well, what can be improved?
“We knew that the platform was still in a beta version when we started creating our chatguide. So we just tried everything until it worked. And soon it did. Once we have understood the principle and the functions of the panels, it´s easy to fill the chatguide with information and adjust them.
What we missed, was a general instruction and further explanation for the different panels.”
Which feedback did you get from the executives from the Museum and from the visitors using it?
“When I introduced the ready chatbased tourguide to the the museums` management, they were quite impressed. Now, Helloguide has become an alternative to our audioguide system which has an outdated equipment.
Also, it addresses different types of visitors: Not everyone likes to get all the information through, especially our younger visitors are used to a fast visual language. So we will continue to create chatguides for them with multimedia content.
For our typical visitors who are slightly older we will continue to offer a classic audioguide at the moment.”
Will you use the chatguide also for future exhibitions?
“We really see the chance to get an better connection to our visitors when we use the chatguide for more than the hard facts.
We now plan to integrate videos in the chatguide in which some of the Kunsthalle employees talk about their favourite work of art or their task in the museum. Not only the curators get a chance to speak, also the supervisory stuff, technicians or conservators. Everyone has something to do with the exhibition. And we believe that the visitors will like to get an impression of all the work behind the scenes.”