Mobile Webapp Example - Museum in visitor experience

This is an example of how a mobile webapp could be used to create a visitor centric app for use in the museum sector.

It is released a demo of what is possible, and an example that museums can use to inform and create their own mobile webapps.

The code itself should be used as a reference only.

Demo

A live demo of the last table release is available at demo.indepth.io. It is optomized for mobile and is best viewed on mobile.

Running the example locally

Requirements: Node 5.7+ (and nothing else)

npm install             -   Installs required components
npm run start           -   Starts dev server with hot reloading (default: port localhost:3000)
npm run ssr-start       -   Starts express server with universal rendering (includes build) (default: port localhost:3000)
npm run static-start    -   Starts express server with client side only content (includes build) (default: port localhost:3001)

Features

• Javascript / React / Redux / Node / Webpack
• Server side rendering (aka universial rendering) for ultra fast loading
• Hardware level apis
  • Vibration
  • Notifications
  • Camera
  • Voice recognition
  • Audio player (including when locked)
  • Offline use
  • Fullscreen mode
• General features
  • Deep zoom images
  • 3d Models and rendering (via sketchfeb)
  • Material design
• Technical specs
  • React / Redux
  • Webpack build process
  • Server side rendeirng through express server
  • CSS Modules
  • PostCSS for styles
  • React Native ready (example coming soon)

Rationale

We believe that the future is webapps, especially for one-time use apps such as those a museum visitor would use. This example has been developed to showcase some of the possibilities that are currently available (Especially on Android) and will soon be available on iOS.

Why are webapps better?

• No app store, no downloading and deleting apps
• Instant access to revelent pages. User can go directly to the page of the item they are looking at rather than navigating through an app to find it.
• Instant loading
• Can be accessed with short urls, QR Codes, NFC, EddyStone beacons and more
• Low barrier to entry, people are used to typing in URLs in their browser
• Access to many hardware level APIs
• Automatically cross platform, android, ios, android watches, google glass, tables, tizen, laptops and future proofed by default
• Just works, forever. Pages from 1993 still work in 2016 and a webapp built in 2016 will still work in 2025.
• It's javascript, the number one used web programming language

Contributors

• Nick Maskell
• Gerard Chin
• Rowan Savage