The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey Launch 2010

On Wednesday 19th May, at Beaulieu Abbey, the launch of The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey multimedia kiosk application took place in front of a large group of invited guests. This was the culmination of several months of organisation between myself, a group of Southampton Solent University's MA Marketing students and Beaulieu.


The event was perceived as a success, according to feedback. The guests showed considerable interest in the application. They were interested in how it would eventually evolve to mobile handsets, the way that adults, professionals and children would be able to access information at their own level in successive versions, and how additional content would be added to continuously engage these groups.


Mary Montagu Scott introduced The Talking Walls, explaining how it would help visitors to learn more about the abbey from the characters that lived and worked at there over it's lifetime. Lord Montagu watched as I demonstrated how to navigate through the rich multimedia content - 9 characters each with their own 'twist' on the animated tours of the abbey. The feedback from Mary and the Bealieu team was very positive. Mary is particlarly pleased with the depth of the information that can be explored, whilst at the abbey or once back at school / home. A great success as far as fulfilling the brief is concerned, I think.


Susan Tomkins, the archivist is also pleased and looks forward to seeing this working on mobile handsets. In the future it is hoped that the visitor will be able to access areas of the application on their own smartphones and explore how the abbey looked whilst standing in the ruins, or play with the educational games whilst sitting in the grounds.

Several of the feedback questionnaires completed requested more than one kiosk, having had to queue to explore the virtual abbey and it's characters. The mobile application would solve this, as people would then be able to access the content on their own devices. Another response was how they would like to see the content for the different groups mentioned above (the current version is a generic age group). This is planned for a future version, with content gradually building and being separated as it grows.


I would like to thank all the guests who came to the launch and for everyone involved in helping make the launch a great success. If you would like to watch a 3-part video on YouTube of the launch speeches, please follow this link for part 1a, part 1b and part 2.

The kiosk is permanently installed in the Abbey museum, visitors to the abbey will be able to visit and explore the virtual abbey and characters during their visit and afterwards on the website: www.thetalkingwalls.co.uk/Beaulieu

Further Developments

Since October several things have happened which have kept me really quite busy. I am now enjoying life as a full-time Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Winchester (started end of Jan 2010). It has helped considerably by having already taught part-time on the course last semester, so it is not too much of a 'new start' but more a continuation and extension of what I was already doing.

In this role, I am involved in the single honours programme - BA / BSc Digital Media Design & Development, of which Mike Seignior is the Course Leader, and a new MA Digital Media Practice degree, for which I am Course Leader, starting in October 2010. A reasonable amount to be getting on with, and a challenge to ensure it works well and becomes successful.

The undergrad degree is approaching the end of its first complete run through of students, having only started 3 years ago, becoming more popular each year, so we now have 14 students ending their first year this summer. It will be interesting to see how the MA Digital Media Practice is received by prospective students in October. The MA (full and part-time)will be an excellent opportunity for those already practicing digital media and who would like to convert their knowledge into a Masters qualification, at the same time improving and learning new skills.

A new course website is currently being designed to showcase current BA/BSc students' work and provide a 'meeting place' and information portal for everything relating to both degree courses and their students. I will post the url as soon as it is in place.

As well as all of the above, The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey application is being launched on the 19th May 2010, with a demonstration of how the application works. This will be on a new kiosk recently installed specifically for the Talking Walls-Beaulieu Abbey application in the Domus Undercroft at Beaulieu Abbey. It is quite exciting seeing the development of this product finally come together. It is even more exciting knowing that visitors to Beaulieu Abbey will be able to explore the history of the abbey and see / hear about the different characters that lived there in the 13th - 16th centuries over the years to come.



We have a group of excellent MA Marketing students (Southampton Solent University) working on the launch with me, ensuring that we have various press officers attending, suitable press releases and managing the guest list's rsvps. A great deal of work has already gone into organising the event, with many thanks to Beaulieu in assisting us with this and making it possible.

We will also be trialling the use of mobile handsets at the event so that guests will be able to walk around the abbey grounds and explore in their own time and in the spaces they want to explore. Digital Media students from Winchester and Marketing students from Southampton Solent University will be able to test the application and give feedback on usability / content of the app on both the kiosk and handsets. Guests might also like to provide feedback, allowing us to explore how well (or not!)the design works and which method of use is the most popular.

If you would like to be included in this event, please contact me at: launch@thetalkingwalls.co.uk and we will send you an invite or discuss how you may be able to help.

The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey

The Beaulieu Abbey pilot is now live on our website. This will be free for a trial period which will continue until the kiosk has been installed at Beaulieu Abbey. After the installation, there will be a product launch, and after this the web version will only be available on a membership basis, with content available for download at a small cost (similar to Apple's iTunes app store). The kiosk and web / mobile version will then have the 'Abbey Slices' section uploaded and any tweaks / amendments completed.

Abbey Slices is the real nub of the application. This allows the user to explore the building in the different 'time slices' (major architectural changes based on research and available footplates), and jump to the different centuries to see what the building looked like and how it was used. It will be very worthwhile to re-visit once this goes live.

Imagine having this on your smartphone as you roam around the physical space of the abbey, standing in the apse of the great church and seeing how vast the internal space of the abbey was, or in the cloisters with the buildings complete in all their glory around you. The visitor / user will then be able to re-visit once back at home via the web and explore in more depth, using the fact sheets and lifestyles, or quizzes.

There are nine characters who can 'escort' you on your 'Tour', which can be the full 14 sections or specific ones you are more interested in. The characters have their own little snippets of information about how they lived there, the roles ranging from Abbot Sulbury through to Percy Warbeck, a pretender to the throne seeking sanctuary in the 1400's. They also 'own' a category of the Abbey, such as Medicines and Herbs, 'owned' by the Infirmarian, Brother Thomas.

Nine is the key in this application, created by one side of the KubeMatrix, a tool developed for simple navigation of the content, primarily for mobile use. This takes me on to explain the design and navigation in a little more depth.

The central panel of the application is what you will see once the application is loaded onto a mobile device (Flash players will need to have been installed prior to use). The side panels are for accessing the same content in other ways, the same as in most software programs. This means that the core design does not have to be re-designed to fit multiple screen sizes - or at least that is the theory I have developed.

With regards to the navigation it might help to read the following tips:

Home page:
1 - Spinning matrix = goes back to Home page to choose another section
2 - KubeMatrix = rollover tool tips to help you choose which section i.e. Characters, Quiz'Ed or another
3 - Side bar = chooses sections i.e. Characters, Quiz'Ed or another


Sub pages:
4 - Nine KubeMatrix = chooses sub-sections i.e. the individuals in Characters or puzzles in Quiz'Ed
5 - Thumbnails = chooses sub-sections i.e. the individuals in Characters or puzzles in Quiz'Ed
6 - Side bar = chooses sub-sections i.e. the individuals in Characters or puzzles in Quiz'Ed
7 - 'EXPLORE' strip = goes back to Nine KubeMatrix to pick another sub-section
8 - 'MORE' strip = goes back to full KubeMatrix to pick another section


Each further sub section has obvious buttons in how to progress, but if anyone has problem with navigating further into the application, please let me know. Example of further subsection below:


Once installed at Beaulieu, the plan is to gauge and capture user experience with the application on the kiosk, handhelds and web, improving the concept and final application.

Work has started on a Jane Austen themed Talking Walls application, a small animation of Steventon Rectory, the Austen's home before it was demolished, and will hopefully be posted in the coming week. Meanwhile enjoy the free trial and let me know what you think.

About to go live....

'The Talking Walls - Beaulieu Abbey' application is almost ready to go live. We are just waiting for final approval from Beaulieu and then we can make the website live, such good news.

It has been almost a year of part-time hours in the making, fitting in the commercial training, PhD and normal day to day life. A very full year.

I have a lot of thanks to give to all my very patient friends who have hardly seen me over the last couple of years (took almost a year to develop the funding application for the Micro Project from FSE/SEEDA!), obviously my family for the same reason and then there are the 'helpers' who have helped create this application. They are:

Alex Hogg - for six of the characters voices
Rebecca Furse - for some of the character illustrations and proof reading
Seanine Joyce - for the music
Sandy Whitehead - for some of the illustrative 3D models and some of the characters
Kim Potter - for producing the web structure that pulls all the content together
New Forest Post Productions - for the use (and help) of the recording studio for the voice overs.

Without their added help, I think I would have been up every night til 1-2pm, as opposed to only half. The music is fantastic, something I would not have achieved on my own and adds so much to the whole, and Alex's voice overs, watching him change the way he spoke for each character and sustain that for half an hour at least was amazing, I struggled for just two, but six, no way. Kim used to work with us years ago with Clear Thinking, the fact that she was back in England and able to help us with the code needed to pull everything together for the web was fantastic, so conscientious, knowing what we needed, how we wanted it to work and producing on time - thanks Kim.

There have been a lot of other people whose confidence and support over the development of 'The Talking Walls' right up to the Beaulieu Abbey project, including Beaulieu, have made this possible, thankyou all. Finally, thankyou FSE / SEEDA, without the match funding through the Micro Project scheme, this just would not have been possible.

Once the site is made live, I will post the link here and spread the word online as well as through traditional means. The site will have free access for 4-6 months and then the 'Interactive Abbey' part will be completed and membership to the site will be active. So please make sure you visit the site within this time and explore. Your thoughts and feedback will be very welcome, and will help provide an insight into how the design bears up to use, and what may need changing / adding / adapting.

Nearly There

After a very busy month or two, the Beaulieu Abbey project is nearing completion. Content is still being produced whilst Kim and Paul are 'knitting' all the content together.

Beaulieu Abbey has been a large project needing a wide range of skills, the most recent of which was script writing and editing followed by recording the voice overs for each of the nine characters. This was quite a feat and we feel quite lucky in being able to have someone we know, Alex Hogg, complete 6 (plus additional sub characters) of the 9 voices for us. This took a whole day at New Forest Post Productions' recording studio with Nick's help and supervision. Paul and I returned a few days later to record the last three voices. I must say, it was much easier writing the script than being a voice. I had to do two voices and make them different, very difficult for me as I am not at all good at mimicking accents, let alone for half an hour's reading, so I am full of admiration for Alex who managed so many and all very different.

These scripts are for the Tours(each character can guide you around the Abbey), then there are the story strips and introduction for each character. Nine characters, 3 scripts per character, as you can see, a fair bit of work in just this.


(I have had trouble uploading the sound file but it can be heard on this link - http://www.thetalkingwalls.co.uk/beaulieu_KingJohn_Story.htm)

The tour script is based on the new audio script now available on Beaulieu's abbey website. This was only recently put in place and sounds really good. The delay in putting this in place also caused a slight delay for our pilot as we had to wait for an approved final script before we were able to have a copy. This copy has been adapted to suit each character and the time in which they lived. These 9 adapted scripts, the intros and stories have all needed to be approved by Beaulieu to ensure the detail is correct. The script has been quite fundamental to a large and important part of the application. Fine detail to the abbey model in accordance with the script, animation of the tours, again in accordance with the script, and obviously the voice overs of the adapted character scripts are all now able to be done.

A busy week ahead! It will actually take more than this, probably at least a couple of weeks so the pilot should be ready to install end of March, hopefully in time for the summer season.