Challenge
Walsh wanted visitors to experience the same excitement he felt as a collector on first encountering his art. He didn’t want them to read about the objects as they shuffled from label to label, as they had done at his Moorilla Museum of Antiquities. He faced two challenges: he wanted visitors to enjoy the artworks in an aesthetically pleasing space, and deliver rich content in an individual manner without distracting from the aforementioned aesthetic.




Approach
Walsh wanted something that didn’t exist, so we formed Art Processors to invent it. Moving information from walls to a mobile device enabled the museum space to be re-imagined; walls didn’t need to be white, there was no need for bright lights to illuminate tiny text, and way-finding became exploratory rather than dictatorial. The context of objects could be extended far beyond a block of words.

I could easily have not opened the doors if some of the art didn’t look right or some of the lighting wasn’t working, but if The O wasn’t there I was never going to open because it was the thing that gave me the freedom to create in the way that I wanted to create.
– David Walsh,
Mona owner
No one likes waiting in line, so at Mona we got rid of them. We added world-first virtual queuing technology to The O that has saved tens of thousands of visitors thousands of days of standing in physical lines.

Solution
The O, is an accessible and user-friendly mobile experience for iOS and Android that provides location-based content for a variety of learning styles and interests. It provides the ability to ‘love’ and ‘hate’ artworks, virtual exhibit queues, augmented reality capabilities, and ‘save tour’ functionality for off-site engagement. The O is powered by our Museum Operating System (MOS), which also supports curatorial and front of house staff in the day-to-day management of the museum.
Impact in numbers
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92 per cent Users who use The O.
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80 per cent Visitors who believe the The O enhanced their experience of the museum.
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113,930 people Visitors who joined virtual queues via The O during the first year of operation.
