The Telecommunications Museum was one of the major winners at this year’s Mobile Excellence Awards ‘20 by Boussias Communications, taking home the Gold Award in the ‘Mobile Applications in Services and Governance’ category, ‘Tourism & Culture’ subcategory, for its AR digital tour.
Furthermore, the Museum got the highest score out of all candidates in all categories, and received the Platinum Award in the ‘Sectoral Mobile Applications’ category. This year’s competition aimed to highlight the top products and the most innovative applications & services throughout the Mobile Business spectrum.
The AR digital tour of the Museum was designed and implemented in cooperation with Cosmote and external partners, and consists of six Augmented Reality applications that are linked to representative landmarks in the history of telecommunications, “connecting” visitors to the Collections and the Museum exhibits.
The originality and unique value of this project rest in the fact that, besides their technological innovation, the AR applications were studied and designed in a targeted way. This aimed to incorporate and promote the content of the Collections in such a way that the Telecommunications Museum become a reference point for all other Greek museums. Visitors were impressed by this new cultural product: how accessible, simple and user-friendly it is.
From a technical standpoint, the project highlighted Cosmote’s technological edge. For this project, Cosmote undertook the development of a special tour application, the original architecture of the network, and the digitization of the exhibits via AR, in order to achieve the result the Museum wanted.
Specifically, the areas of the permanent exhibition where AR technology was incorporated, enriching the display of the exhibits, were:
Greeting by the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, via his digital portrait at the Museum entrance
Morse introduces himself via his 3D hologram and invites us to discover the oldest telegrams in the Museum.
Telephone cables are submerged into the sea before visitors’ eyes by OTE’s cable ship.
A Telephone Booth from the 1930s is surrounded by 3D holograms of people from that time! We can make a call using AR.
The history of the Museum building. What used to be in the Museum space 50 years ago? Analogue centres operating with a click
The Museum, enhancing its openness, incorporated the AR histories of telecommunications into its social media and website, transporting the visitor's tour experience into a digital environment. Furthermore, AR was creatively incorporated into the Museum's tours and educational programmes. Since 2018, and within just two years (2018-2020), 18,000 visitors became acquainted with the Collections and exhibits of the Museum, while 250 tours and 240 educational programmes were held with the contribution of AR.
Recent events have highlighted the importance of the Museum’s readiness to stay in touch and communicate with its visitors in a purely digital environment. In this way it succeeded in responding immediately, dynamically, and consistently, maintaining and perhaps even strengthening its ties with its various audiences.
Monday – Friday
10:00-17:00
(last entry on 16:00)
Two Sundays each month
10:00-16:00