Over the last 6 weeks we managed to build a website and app-while we are focusing on the story of John Mitchell Christie, we chose to title our project ‘Pocket Museum.’ These platforms are home to videos, including 2 trailers (in total, one trailer to promote John Mitchell Christies story on the app, the other is on the home page of the website to draw a users attention to his section on the website) and a webisode. We also have audio files, telling the selected stories from the perspective of Christies wife. We did think about using the same actor who played Christie in the webisodes, however, we wanted to include a female in our project- Christie was a man who worked in a male dominated industry in a world where men tended to have more of a control, and most of our resources were also written by men, so it was good to have a female presence. By including his wife I believe it also helps to ground Christies story and encourage a sense of realism. It breaks down the fantasy element his life had, it reminds the audience that h was a real person, with a family, these stories actually took place in Melbourne. I was responsible for managing the app. To create the app we used ‘Goodbarber,’ it offered full online support and allowed me to build an app with out any knowledge in the area (and most importantly no coding). This task was incredibly daunting at first, it took hours to try and upload a video, which didn’t work half the time, but after just trying to build the app and not worrying about messing it up it began fairly easy to use. I quickly learnt that to tell this story successfully over multiple platforms I would have to work closely with Amy creating the website. We ensured that the designs and layouts were similar and we encouraged agency between the platforms. There was a point that we worried that the story may have gotten lost in the app and website, that it had become so broken up into different segments that it had simply disappeared, but once we had added the videos and audio files and put the final map points in it all came together and you could see the stories expand and flow between platforms. Unfortunately our vision of having an augmented reality component on the app did not happen. As far as we know the feature wasn’t available on goodbarber and we didn’t have the knowledge to do it ourselves, or the time to learn how to do it ourselves. Despite this, the interactive map is still very effective and does most of what we wanted- there are some geofences, alerting users to a pin near by, the pins also support a substantial amount of information and images, and encourage users to use all of the apps components (audio artifacts) and explore the website. I’m proud of what our group achieved, especially since it was the first app and website any of us had built. I believe that we tell the story of John Mitchell Christie successfully over multiple platforms, in an engaging and effective way that I hope to continue to grow in the future.

Pocket Museum…

The Website: http://pocketmuseumjmc.wix.com/pocketmuseum

The App: Pocket Museum is currently accessible on GooglePlay- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goodbarber.pocketmuseum&hl=en

For iOS it can be accessed through the ‘my goodbarber’ app (select Pocket Museum, native preview, a screen will pop up telling you to pinch the screen to minimize the app, just tap this and you will se the start up screen/home page- explore from there!)
Username: pocketmuseumjmc@gmail.com
Password: JMCthestorylab

The videos and audio files are accessible through the app and website