Museum of London

Voice assistant for facility managers

Byline

The Museum of London shows the long history of the English capital from the first settlers to modern times and receives over one million visitors every year. To realize its vision of becoming a "smart museum" and using resources efficiently, the Museum of London is once again joining hands with Munich University of Applied Sciences students in the summer semester of 2022 to work together on another project. To help the museum reach its goal, a group of ten students have come together to develop a solution that integrates the use of the ALLRight voice assistant into the museum's facility management.

The vision for 2023

In an effort to engage more people and continually evolve into a "New Museum," knowing exactly where and when a disruption occurs in the building is critical for all stakeholders. Past collaborative projects between the Museum of London and MUAS student teams have always been about the efficient use of resources and maintaining an optimal environment not only for visitors, but also for the preservation of historic artifacts.

Hurdles along the way

However, the Museum of London's facilities managers struggled to quickly determine the condition of the building. With multiple data points and limited access to that data, identifying issues with the building's functionality is an inefficient and time-consuming process, as they have to check various systems or ask around to find out what's wrong. Instead of going through all this trouble, they want easy and quick access to information about the building's functionality, and the most convenient way to get the information they need is through a voice assistant.

Providing a valuable solution to the customer's problem

The intuitive voice assistant ALLRight was developed as a "skill" based on Amazon's famous voice assistant Alexa. It answers the 8 critical questions about the condition of the buildings in the Museum of London and provides information about technical problems that occur. With the voice assistant, facility managers can conveniently get a quick and easy overview of the current condition of the building. What makes ALLRight special is the interaction between it and the user, as the ability to incorporate personalization and converse with users in a natural way has been developed.

"The team has exceeded my expectations," said the client from the Museum of London, Steve Watson - Technical Building Lead - and John Iaciofano - Facilities Manager - are delighted with the development of the ALLRight voice assistant from its inception to the completion of the prototype.

"Normally, when I was working, I was constantly worried about the condition of the museum. I couldn't quickly and easily get reliable information about temperatures and humidity in the galleries. I wanted accurate, reliable and valid information to know that everything was okay," said John, facilities manager at the Museum of London. "With ALLright, I feel like I can get the information I need at any time. And I can do all of this at the same time while working at my desk!"

"ALLright is an exciting innovation that makes accessing building data easy, fun, and reliable. Managing buildings is all about decision-making, and ALLright quickly informs me of the relevant information to support important decisions. This app is a glimpse into the future of building management," Steve said. When asked about future uses, he added, "I see a future where buildings will be much better structured at the data level and voice assistants will then have a very rich source of information and analysis. Then I see voice assistants becoming more adept at natural language and also having a back-end learning capability that improves with specific buildings, their data sets and their interactions."