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Back in July, we reported upon a project by Newcastle University which had been under way for some time.
The RAMP (Rock Art on Mobile Phones) project aimed to provide information on the various known rock art sites at Lordenshaw, Weetwood Moor and Dod Law in Northumberland, via information provided on a website optimised for mobile phone use. The project is now drawing to a close and can be read about here and here.
One interesting aspect of the project was the decision to include QR codes on the waypoint signs to facilitate access to the data, an idea that we’ve discussed here previously. So how successful was the projects? A couple of interesting quotes from the project blog will illustrate:
“Mobile phone signal is ropey. We knew this of course, but to my mind it still remains the only feasible option.
“It would have been nice to test the websites using the participants’ own phones but unfortunately most of the people taking part in the evaluation didn’t have Internet enabled mobiles, which meant using the project phones.
“RAMP has been a challenging project, there’s no easy solution to developing a cultural heritage mobile phone experience in a rural setting.
The information presented can be viewed (no mobile phone required) in any browser on the main RAMP website.
What do we think? Ok, so in the environmental conditions of the Northumberland moors maybe relying on phone signals isn’t such a wonderful idea. The same goes for any remote environment, but we’re still big fans of the QR code idea for information dissemination here, and there are undoubtedly situations where such a scheme could be enormously successful.
The Heritage Journal 