The application added a 360º tour of the Immigrants Hotel with high quality images, audio guides and interactive signage.

The MUNTREF Museum View app has incorporated a 360º tour of the Immigrants Hotel that allows users to get to know the historic building from the outside and explore the exhibition entitled For all the men of the world, dedicated to the wealth of migratory movements in our country.

One of the application’s developers, Juan Galvis, explained that the first stage of the tour places the visitor at the entrance to the museum from a standing position outside the building, providing information about its history, architecture, and present. Meanwhile, the second stage corresponds to the building’s interior and allows one to enter the permanent exhibition For all the men of the world, divided in turn into four sections: travel, arrival, insertion and legacy.

Galvis pointed out that there are 10 “strategically selected” stops on this route that provide a more complete view of each of the sections, and said that with this implementation “we seek to generate an experience that enhances the public’s interest in knowing more about an important part of Argentine history”.

He also referred to the chosen format. “By using a camera that captures with a viewing angle of 360°, it is possible to capture the entire panorama from a specific point, thus obtaining a high quality image”, he said.

Each stop of the tour, the developer specified, has as its main element a 360º image complemented with audio guides and interactive signage. “All this process results in an experience closer to being physically in the museum, which exceeds the simple web-like exploration that traditional apps have”, he said.

Galvis pointed out that since the app’s launch last year, in the context of the pandemic, new functions have been added to it, such as the visitor reservation system, live streaming of events and new forms of registration through social networks. On the return to the physical visits to museums, the developer commented that they are preparing another feature that uses image recognition technologies through artificial intelligence. “This is the new Museum Mode, with which all the information about a sample can be obtained by simply pointing the device’s camera at each work or point of interest within the museum. In this mode, the audio guides will work only with headphones connected to it, without causing inconvenience to others”, he explained.

For her part, the MUNTREF extension coordinator Valeria Traversa stressed that, in addition to the general public, the app is used by primary and secondary level teachers to work with their students on content related to immigration.

“It seems to me a very good pedagogical tool. What 360º tours have is that they are more dynamic, with a better location, something that gives teachers better possibilities”, she said. 

Traversa pointed out the fact that the advantage of these types of resources is their flexibility. “The app can be used by the support teacher in their classes, as part of a collective work, or it can be used by each student at home, as an individual task”, she illustrated.