This week was all about getting the ADA compliance ready with the listening option for the app. It took a few days to get the bugs worked out and get the voice sort of right. The native voice was very robotic in an unsettling way. I was able to use the google voices option from their API which sounds a bit more human.
The next thing to do was make it so that whatever language the person chose would be able to be read. This seems like it would be a hard task but the code for that is simple, since google has the languages already figured out. It looks very impressive and the history center staff was impressed but it was the easiest part.
I had my wisdom teeth taken out on Thursday so I couldn’t test the features in the museum.
Our plan going forward is to walk the museum and view room by room what we would want to cover and how. Some rooms were not historically interesting, meaning they were offices and more offices. Once you go over one office the others are superfluous.
While some are less interesting historically some are less involved with museum exhibits. The two court rooms on either end have little in the way of exhibit space and are there for the history and some of the offices have been turned into a gift shop or other rooms without exhibits.
How the museum staff wants to treat this is up to them. We can detail every room or we can make a simple tour to give people the idea historically and then cover whatever we need to for the exhibits. I have given the museum access to the webpage where all the tours can be created and edited. Right now I am their intern so its my duty to do this but in the future they can do it themselves if they so choose.
The app is coming along nicely and there is still work to do for a self guided walking tour but I am confident that by the end of the semester they can soft debut it if they want. Here are some images of the audio additions.
