The Story
The LACMA mobile app, available through iTunes and the Android Market, provides event information and ticket reservation capability. Plan your visit to LACMA and discover exhibitions, film screenings, concerts, tours, shops, restaurants, and more. Reserve tickets, read about new exhibitions and watch with in-depth videos, including illuminating interviews with artists and curators.
FEATURES HIGHLIGHT:
an interactive map shows the location of exhibitions and events on campus
descriptions of exhibitions and installations currently on view
up-to-the-minute information about what’s happening today, tomorrow and this weekend paperless ticketing
tour the galleries, learning about highlights from the museum’s extensive collection of art
share favorite works of art on Facebook and Twitter.
Ability for admins to keep content updated without resubmission to the App Store
Also available as a mobile site by visiting lacma.org on your smartphone browser. Compatible devices include Android, iPhone and iPod Touch and Blackberry Torch.
Live content provided through a constant internet-based feed.
The Challenge
How do you deliver a world-class app for one of the largest museums outside of the eastern seaboard? First, partner with a great design agency (as we often do). Second, you follow that up with a commitment to iterative development, ensuring constant flexible improvement on a user-focused experience. But a great visual experience isn't enough. Any system built in our time requires powerful administrative controls. Of course, we aren't talking about just any content: the client has more than 100,000 works in its collection. We'll need just a bit of horsepower for its databases. Did we mention the online ticketing capability?
The Result
A ringing success. New features allow for the promotion of highlighted shows, such as Tim Burton's retrospective. Iterative development provided a forum in which user feedback could be folded into refined features in successive releases. Drupal was used as the foundation on the backend, so that administration of the organization's monolithic content stream was not a problem. And fans, as well as donors, were kept very happy, as demonstrated by a 4 1/2 star rating in the App Store.