For a lot of people my age, museums are… homework with better lighting. You walk in, face long walls of text, squint at old plaques, and hope you don’t yawn too loudly in front of the guide. Yet behind those walls are incredible stories, art that shaped culture, and history worth listening to.

At the Apple Developer Academy, my team wanted to challenge ourselves with something more than just “make another app.” We asked: What if museums could talk to you directly? What if the walls told their own story, in your own ears, on your own device? That spark became the seed of Audium.

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Where It All Began

Our journey didn’t start with a whiteboard—it started with a problem we couldn’t ignore. Data showed that museum visitors in Jakarta had been dropping year after year. Cultural spaces that should have been alive were losing audiences, especially young people.

And this wasn’t only about numbers. Declining visitors meant shrinking relevance. If a new generation lost interest in history and art, what would happen in ten or twenty years? That’s the bigger question we walked into this project with.

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The People We Wanted to Help

We decided to get out of the Academy and step into the actual spaces. At Museum Fatahillah and Museum BI, we sat with museum heads who explained their struggles. They wanted people to engage, to feel the exhibitions, but they could see interest slipping away.

We also talked to visitors, especially younger ones. Their honesty was brutal:

• “Too much text, I don’t feel like reading everything.”
• “It’s tiring, I just look around quickly.”
• “Sometimes I don’t understand what I’m supposed to feel.”

The message was clear: the museums had plenty to say, but no one was listening in the way they were delivering it.

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What Wasn’t Working

Some attempts had been made. QR codes were stuck onto exhibitions, asking visitors to scan and read more. But visitors found it annoying to constantly stop and pull out their phones. Other places offered rented audio devices. But in a post-pandemic world, no one really wanted to share headsets with strangers.

Both solutions solved the “access to information” problem on paper. In reality, they created more friction. Instead of making art more enjoyable, they made the visit feel like a chore.

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How We Tried to Fix It

That was when we asked ourselves: could technology get out of the way instead of adding more steps?

Our answer was Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). If BLE beacons could quietly trigger audio content on a visitor’s personal phone, then stories could play automatically as they moved through the gallery. No scanning, no borrowing devices—just a seamless experience.

We started with desk research to understand BLE’s limits, then created our first prototype. Testing it inside the Academy gave us encouraging results. Mentors liked the simplicity, and their feedback pushed us to refine it.

With version two, we took a bigger step: real-world testing. We partnered with WitjkStudio, an art collective, and secured Galeri Zen1 in Menteng as our pilot venue.

That day, 150+ people came, including well-known figures like Bill Mohdor. Watching them explore the gallery while their phones whispered stories in their ears was surreal. The space felt different—alive, flowing, and fresh.

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The Moment Everything Clicked

The turning point for me wasn’t a metric or a milestone. It was a moment. Standing in Galeri Zen1, I watched a group of teenagers walk past three paintings, earbuds in, smiling as they listened. None of them stopped to squint at the text on the wall. None of them looked lost.

For the first time, the art was speaking directly to them. That was when I knew Audium was more than just a student project—it was a glimpse of how culture could feel if we designed it around the visitor, not the display.

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What We Achieved

We called it Audium, and we shipped it to the App Store. The pilot reached over 100 downloads and finished one month earlier than the average Academy timeline. Our team didn’t just deliver; we delivered fast, and we delivered with outside partners already on board.

That mix—real users, real venue, real feedback—was unusual for Academy projects, which often stayed inside the bubble. That made Audium stand out.

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What I Took With Me

As Product Manager, I wasn’t just ticking boxes. I initiated the research, steered the vision, managed stakeholders, and even designed early wireframes and branding. When you’re the only PM in a five-person team, you wear many hats.

The hardest problem was BLE itself. Indoors, it sometimes mis-detected when artworks were too close together. We had to accept that tech isn’t magic. But it taught me something more important: to keep testing, iterating, and not falling in love with the first version of a solution.

My biggest takeaway? Never trust your assumptions—step into the field, listen, and let real users teach you what matters.

If I could do it again, I’d start building partnerships earlier and push harder on solving BLE’s accuracy. But the core lesson will always stick: innovation isn’t about adding more, it’s about removing friction until the story speaks for itself.