The audio guide Visitors Keep

Traditional audio guide devices consume valuable resources in a museum.

They must be stored, charged, sanitized, distributed and repaired.

They also need to be collected at the end of the tour.

To ensure their return, visitors typically need to leave a credit card or personal ID as a deposit, which is a potential security risk as well as a hassle for visitors

Nubart audio guide cards are the solution.

They work as a non-transferable key that allows easy and quick access to multilingual content directly from the visitor’s smartphone.

They require no maintenance or staff support.

Since visitors can keep them, they don’t require a deposit nor anti-theft protection to be lent out.

They are also attractive and a nice collectible souvenir.

Museums moving away from conventional audio guides tend to consider native apps as an alternative. However, development of a museum app is expensive. They need to be developed twice (iPhone and Android), are generally not flexible for content changes, demand constant maintenance and require costly updates.

Beyond that, visitors are not inclined to install an app they are likely to use only once. The result is a very low download rate of only around 1% and hardly any ROI for the museum.

Nubart is a browser-based progressive web-app (PWA) that is accessed through our cards. It works instantly from any kind of smartphone (iPhone, Android, Windows, etc.), even from old models. No updates required!

Nubart doesn't consume the device's storage since the digital content is streamed. Offline solutions are also available.

If your museum is thinking about developing an audio guide for the first time, you may feel overwhelmed by the many things you need to consider.

How to write an appropriate script for an audio guide? How many tracks should your audio guide have? How long should each track be? Where can you find a professional translator for Chinese, for instance, or a Japanese voice artist?

But also: how to find a reliable and professional translator into Chinese? Or who could make a professional voice over for your Japanese visitors?

Many companies will offer you a technical solution (apps or similar) but leave you to navigate the content and creative side alone. Nubart works with proven storytelling experts and production professionals, so we can offer you both: innovative audio guide technology and first-class content production.

We collaborate with you at every step, from the script conception to final presentation of the digital content.

Of course, we can also integrate in our system the content that you already have.

You can check out our work schedule and method here.

Your audio guide is an important part of the visitor experience.

The design of the card is always personalized and branded with your logo. Regarding the digital content, you can request two levels of customization:

• Basic customization
  Includes logo and color preferences
• Complex customization
  Includes logo, colors, choice of audio player, spacing and fonts

If you want to go even further, we can also create a clone of our content management system to run under a domain of your own, which would provide exclusive access and additional features.

Visitor research is critical--but difficult to gather.

Nubart cards are not only an innovative audio guide that provides a multilingual self-guided tour to your audience, but also an ideal data collector. Nubart gathers usage and behavioral data from your visitors' smartphones anonymously, never violating their privacy. (See our Data Policy for Nubart's audio guides).

As a Nubart customer you'll receive free usage reports as often as you want. Included in these reports:

• Home country of the visitor
• Visitor’s native language
• Visitors per day
• Visitors by time-of-day
• Duration of the visit
• Ranking of most-listened-to tracks

Since every card has a unique code, we can do data mining for you. For example, we can answer questions like: "How many French visitors came to my museum during the afternoon?". Or: "Have Japanese visitors listened to track #14 more than Chinese visitors?"

Learn more about Nubart as a data collector

Our free data reports collect a great deal of anonymous information about your visitors and their behavior. Certain important information cannot be retrieved automatically, but you can ask your visitors to provide it to you.

That's why after the last track of every audio guide, the visitor can interact with your museum through a short, 5-question survey. Our two standard questions are:

• general scoring of the exhibition on a scale from 1 - 5.
• a text field for comments about the exhibition or about the audio guide.

You'll be surprised at how thorough and useful our visitor comments can be. Museums can receive visitor comments in real-time by email.

Your museum can select three additional questions from a list of options such as age and gender, as long as visitors choose to share this info with you. Thanks to our unique code system, the visitor can only answer the questionnaire once, ensuring the quality of the data. Incomplete answers are also captured.

Are you planning a guided city-tour?

Would you like to have an audio guide for a national park?

Our audio guides can integrate maps and also geolocate points of interest.

In addition, our geolocated audio tracks light up in red and scroll automatically to the top of the mobile screen as visitors approach a designated exhibit or location. In Android, this process is enhanced by a slight vibration of the mobile phone.

In this way, your visitor always knows which track she is supposed to listen to next. Our tracks do not play automatically to enable a non-intrusive functionality.

Our geolocation often works in offline mode or indoors. We can gladly offer a non-binding test to ensure this is possible in your venue.

Video demo of Nubart's geolocation

Our audio guide set in offline mode is ideal for museums that only have free Wi-Fi in the lobby or for audio tours in areas with poor data coverage or none at all.

Here’s how it works: The code is initially scanned in an area with connectivity. All digital content of the audio guide is temporarily downloaded to the visitor's smartphone. No need to install an app or to consume memory! From this point on, the content can be heard in offline mode for as long as desired. Closing the browser will cause the content to disappear from the smartphone, but it can be accessed anytime by simply using the card again.

Video demo of Nubart's offline-mode