Overview
Smartify is an app created to help people connect with the arts and culture. Developers work with collections of all sizes to enhance the museum experience, both on-site and at home. With the vast amount of art and history to explore in any museum, Smartify offers an easy and comprehensible way to connect with the culture around you. The app provides multiple ways to experience artwork, including audio tours, scanning works to learn their stories, and developing your own knowledge through artist synopses. This app is particularly beneficial for those with limited vision, enabling them to clearly see art and easily read or listen to its history. Smartify is also valuable for individuals who can’t travel to their desired museum. As a student studying art, this app has helped me understand the importance of the history of art, not just the work itself.
Affordances
The app’s clean and intuitive user interface encourages people to explore and engage with its features. The use of high-resolution multimedia elements, including images, videos, audio, and augmented reality tours, offers viewers a great in-depth experience that is sometimes not possible to fulfill in physical museums. Smartify also allows users to turn on notifications and receive emails about artwork, stories, and offers that are specially tailored to their interests. In addition to being able to see trending tours and current exhibitions in your area, Smartify has an online gift shop where users can purchase posters, homeware, and fashion items. You also have the option to create your own profile and save works from your favorite artists, exhibitions, and scans.
Design
Upon opening Smartify, you are greeted by the app with a ‘good afternoon’ and presented with a pleasant image of the week’s featured artwork. As you scroll left, you can view the week’s featured tour, venue, exhibition, and artist as well. The app has a very simple white color scheme and an easy-to-read font; therefore, users are most attracted to Smartify’s playful thumbnail images and enticing word usage that makes them want to learn more. Users are drawn in by the app’s constant use of the word ‘trending,’ which includes artists, objects, tours, and shop items.
Explore
In the Explore tab, users get an interactive map that shows venues, exhibitions, artworks, sculptures, and even street art in relation to their current location. You can also search for specific museums or artworks yourself, where you can see how close they are to you, get directions, a quick summary of their history, and check if they are currently open for viewing. Within this tab and throughout all of Smartify, you can see detailed pictures of artworks and read an extremely thorough description, allowing everyone, regardless of their mobility or schedule, to enjoy art.
Scan
The scanning feature allows you to identify artwork you come across, whether in a museum setting or anywhere else you venture. When scanning a work, Smartify provides you with the history and details of the piece, as well as where it can be found, and even suggests related artworks that you may also like. This feature gives users quick and easy access to information, encouraging education in the arts and promoting creative fluency.
Shop
Smartify incentivizes its users to order from the online gift shop, directly supporting the app’s museum and gallery partners. On the cover page, Smartify advertises merchandise from specific exhibitions and independent artists, contributing to their further flourishing. The shop offers a wide variety of gifts, allowing shoppers to filter products by partner, artist, product type, movement, and price. Additionally, the shop provides sales and returns to shoppers. The opportunity for Smartify users to have a piece of art inspired by famous works, old or new, can make individuals feel closer to the arts.
Profile
The Profile tab on Smartify allows you to save your favorite artwork, artists, tours, exhibitions, places, and scans you have found within the app. This feature enables users to develop their own unique interests and record their artistic education.
How Has the Role of Art Museums Changed in the Digital Age?
Conclusion
After analyzing the Smartify app, I found more positive insights than negative. Apps like Smartify are not only making art appreciation and education more accessible, but they are also turning it into a fun and gratifying experience. Information is broken down enough to make learning about an art movement or the life of a famous artist not overwhelming. Considering Smartify and its function while also contemplating its potential to shift the way we view museums brings about possible good and bad outcomes. The app strikes an interesting balance, incentivizing individuals to visit museums while also providing them with engaging content they can enjoy from the comfort of their homes. There are many positives to Smartify; it encourages people to get out and explore the art around them while staying up to date on the latest upcoming artists and exhibitions. However, while Smartify brings more awareness to the art that is out there, over time, apps like this may cause the visitation rate of museums to slowly diminish. The role of art museums in the digital age will inevitably change, and there are both positives and negatives to the situation.