Art Institute of Chicago App 12+

The app is nice to search by an artist or artwork. The geofencing is great to show where you are in the museum. After that, it has several drawbacks. It crashes and has to reload whenever you switch to a different app. Then you are stuck on the loading screen and have to get back to wherever you are. I tried to load the narration for one of the miniature rooms and I couldn’t choose by number, then randomly pushed a dot near my location. I got an error message saying it couldn’t download the file.

I’m a long-time AITC member. Got an email from them saying membership was expiring soon. Thought I’d get the App to check hours and exhibit dates of something I wanted to see rather than just Googling it. The App is a waste. No hours listed! No days open listed! No overall list of exhibits or coming events! Sure, I can watch a 15 minute video of something and see a floor plan, but that’s not what I need! I searched “hours” it gave me “horses”. Only useful thing I found was my membership doesn’t expire for another 3months. But who cares, I still don’t know when the exhibit ends or day the Museum is closed. Back to Google

The tours, mapping, etc are all tremendous app features. The app trips up on execution in two specific ways:

(1) The opening graphic animation — which you cannot bypass — is too long to wait for as you are standing in front of the person waiting to scan your membership card info. Wait for it... wait for it... doesn’t this slow down the lines?

(2) Every time I try to use the “switch cardholders” button (info comes up as my wife by default), the app crashes. Every time. (iPhone X, latest iOS release)

I’ve kept the old member app (no longer available in the App Store) on my phone just in order to avoid using the “new & improved” app. Which is all to say: it would be a great app if the basic functioning for members was taken care of.