Craft Contemporary’s pilot program with our Project sondAR Lite mobile AR social app successfully demonstrated how museums can enhance visitor engagement through interactive, multi-media experiences—proving the technology’s viability and paving the way for museum-wide expansion. Reading time: 2 minutes
Craft Contemporary sought to deepen visitor engagement with their exhibitions while providing accessible, educational content that enhanced the museum experience. They envisioned extended digital play in their exhibit spaces—a layer of interactive storytelling that wouldn’t overwhelm the physical environment or require extensive printed materials.
The Pilot Program Solution
Through our discovery process, we identified that a streamlined version of Project sondAR—our independently developed mobile AR social app platform—was a perfect match for Craft Contemporary’s challenges and vision. We launched a pilot program using Project sondAR Lite, adapting the technology to create a custom mobile AR application that transforms how visitors interact with artwork. By scanning QR codes placed throughout the museum, visitors instantly access rich, immersive content about individual pieces—creating a seamless bridge between physical and digital experiences.
Pilot Program Features
Multi-Media Storytelling
The mobile AR app’s expanding feature set empowers curators to craft rich, layered narratives using any combination of media—audio commentary, video content, image galleries, and written insights. This flexibility enables the curation team to weave the most compelling story for each work of art, matching the medium to the message.
Interactive AR Pins
Each artwork is accompanied by an AR pin that visitors access via QR code, delivering curated content directly to their mobile devices in an immersive, contextualized format.
Social Audio Tours
Curators leverage the mobile AR social app to create guided audio experiences, offering personal narratives and expert commentary that bring exhibitions to life in new ways.
Social Visitor Engagement
The app enables two-way social interaction, allowing guests to comment on pieces and explore related media, fostering a sense of community and dialogue around the art. This social layer transforms the museum visit into a shared, connective experience.
Content Management System
Museum staff maintain full control through an intuitive CMS, empowering them to update, customize, and manage AR content for each exhibition without technical dependencies.
Analytics Dashboard
The pilot program includes analytics functionality that provides both qualitative and quantitative insights into visitor behavior, engagement patterns, and content performance—helping the museum make data-driven decisions about programming and exhibitions.
Pilot Program Results
The mobile AR social app pilot has fundamentally transformed the Craft Contemporary visitor experience by:
- Enhancing Accessibility: Information is available on-demand through the mobile AR app, accommodating different learning styles and pacing preferences
- Deepening Engagement: Multi-layered content keeps visitors engaged longer and encourages return visits
- Empowering Curators: Easy content management enables rapid updates and experimentation with storytelling approaches
- Building Community: Social features create ongoing dialogue between visitors, artists, and the institution through the mobile AR platform
- Enabling Social Discovery: Visitors connect with each other and share insights through the app’s social engagement tools
- Validating the Approach: The pilot program successfully demonstrated the viability of mobile AR technology for museum environments
Scaling Beyond the Pilot
Following the success of the initial pilot program with Project sondAR Lite, we are now deploying additional functionality that provides enhanced analytics capabilities and expanded content management features. The proven results from the pilot phase have positioned Craft Contemporary to scale the mobile AR social app across additional exhibitions and potentially museum-wide, while the data collected continues to inform feature development and user experience refinements. The pilot program framework also serves as a model for other cultural institutions exploring mobile AR solutions.