Freetouch™ has announced that the Reagan Ranch Center, an interpretive center that maintains President Reagan’s Western White House in Santa Barbara, is bringing visitors from around the world a safe touchless interactive experience.
Freetouch’s patent-pending technology eliminates the need for physical contact with the Center’s touchscreens. Instead, visitors to the Center’s 3500 square-foot gallery use their smartphones to interact with the Freetouch enabled touchscreen exhibit. The centerpiece exhibit in the main gallery of the Reagan Ranch Center is the Timeline Table, a popular, touchscreen interactive. It was extensively re-envisioned and updated in 2019 and is now also Freetouch enabled.
“We have it up and running now and we’re really pleased,” says Brent Kilpper, Associate Director of The Reagan Ranch Center. “It lets you use a QR code and turn your phone into a tracking surface, and it works fantastically. We retained all functionality of the exhibit; it was really just a perfect tool for this. It’s very simple, just use your cellphone and away you go.”
The Timeline Table has five user stations with room for others to gather around. The Center also offers Freetouch on two other interactive exhibits in the museum, letting users explore archives of Reagan presidential radio addresses and White House logs.
“Freetouch is not only helping us address challenges posed by the pandemic, but it’s also making it more convenient and comfortable for visitors to experience our exhibits,” said Kilpper. “We couldn’t be happier with the way Freetouch works, allowing visitors to use a QR code to turn their phones into a remote control. For us, it is the right technology at just the right time, allowing us to retain all functionality of the exhibit while implementing the latest health and safety requirements.”
As part of its re-opening strategy, The Reagan Ranch Center will use Freetouch to create a safe and contact-free environment for the general public. Serving visitors with reservations at 25% capacity, the Center will soon offer visitors to its 20,000 square-foot center the same engaging experience that they have come to enjoy in the past, while maintaining important safety protocols.
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“For the foreseeable future, businesses will be under pressure to offer contactless alternatives for touch-averse customers,” said Darren David, Freetouch Founder & CEO. “The Reagan Ranch Center offers a great example of how organizations in every sector are using our easy-to-install solution to do just that. It’s similar to the shift that grocery stores made when they began offering disinfecting wipes for their shopping carts – not every shopper uses them, but everyone feels better knowing they’re available. What was originally an isolated offering is now the industry standard; we’re anticipating the same response with touchless interactivity. It’s an easy win.”
Working with Stimulant, an award-winning experience design agency and the creator of Freetouch, the Reagan Ranch Center has also now completed a new, Freetouch-enabled exhibit featuring a piece of the Berlin wall. This coincided with the anniversary of the wall’s falling on November 9, 1989 and is one of the newest exhibits to premiere as part of the Center’s reopening.
“Freetouch will allow our visitors, even in the wake of COVID-19, to use our interactive exhibits in the way they are intended to be used,” added Kilpper.
