Mobile Audio Tour Case Studies
Roman Town House Dorset Case Study
The Roman Town House located at Colliton Park in Dorchester was discovered in 1937 during an archaeological investigation. The Town House is a Scheduled Ancient Monument and a Grade 1 Listed Building. It is bounded by North and West Walks which are also Scheduled Monuments having the remains of the Roman ramparts of the town just below surface level.
Dorset County Council Testimonial
"Dorset County Council set out from 2003 onwards to provide a new audience friendly interpretation for the Roman Town House. To achieve this we realised that it was desirable to provide an audio guide as part of the solution. This could address the needs of those with poor vision as well as adding an extra dimension to a visit for others visiting the site."
"The problem was how to deliver this on a site freely accessible 24 hours a day which is not staffed. Expensive hand sets were out of the question and audio boxes that could be wound up to play messages were difficult to incorporate without spoiling the setting of this Scheduled Monument and disturbing the peace and quiet of the county council workers in the adjacent offices."
Guided Tour using Visitor Mobile Phones
"Then we discovered the concept of the Mobitour via a visitors own mobile phone. The costs of delivering this with outside contractors was still well above our budget until we discovered that producing this ourselves with some outside help was feasible."
"Our schools technology centre had the recording studios to record voices and mix music and had access to a library of sound effects. We hired an experienced author to write the script, actors and a narrator/producer and found we could hire the telephonic delivery service from X-on."
"Although we had never done this before X-on helped us to script the mechanical parts and cope with tight deadlines and enabled the audio tour to be up and running for the September 2008 opening ceremony. Small corrections were rapidly sorted out and we now wait to assess the performance of the system over its first full year."
"We see tremendous potential in the way these telephone tours can be used and will be working with X-on again to deliver cultural experiences to the residents and visitors to Dorset's unique environment."
John Lowe
Historic Environment Manager
