Battle Abbey was founded by William the Conqueror on the site of the Battle of Hastings, as penance for the bloodshed of the Norman Conquest. Now managed by English Heritage, Battle Abbey offers a variety of things to see and do. The Gatehouse Exhibition opened to the public in 2017, an exhibition about the abbey in the years after 1066.

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A major part of the exhibition is a mobile app children's tour that encourages young visitors to explore and find specific objects, at which point the app reveals more information and stories about the objects. The app is led by an illustrated, animated and narrated monk called Brother William.

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The app is not available to the public through an app store, but was developed to run on a set of 20 Android tablets owned and operated by the abbey. The tablets are handed out to visitors at the start of their visit and collected from them before they leave.

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The app begins with a welcome screen that prompts visitors to press the play button, at which point Brother William introduces himself and encourages further exploration around the exhibition, before the app then waits on an iBeacons holding screen. A number of iBeacons are located around the exhibition, the app scans for and detects these in order to know which room the visitor is in.

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When the app detects an iBeacon, if a different room has just been entered, the app automatically responds with an audible ping, and Brother William gives an introduction to the new room and the object(s) in it. The volume is automatically turned up to 50% on entering a new room, so the audio can be heard even if visitors have previously turned the volume down. Brother William asks visitors to search the room for the specific object(s), and then press the play button on the holding screen when they have done so.

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Brother William returns again to entertain visitors with humorous stories and facts related to the object, and after he has finished a menu offers more facts, questions and activities, all related to the current object and it's stories. The app contains stories, facts and activities for five objects located in three rooms.

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The app contains a hidden control panel screen, accessible only to staff members. This screen provides options to restart the app, to use a touch screen menu to navigate the rooms rather than iBeacons, and also an option to exit the app completely. The tablets were locked down using a third party app to restrict the use of hardware buttons and to prevent visitors accessing the OS.

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In addition to developing the app, I also setup and tested all the tablets, performed the on-site iBeacons installation and configuration, and all on-site testing, client training and handover.