It's been an intense week of building at Mooseum, and I'm excited to share what we've shipped. If you've been following along, you know we're on a mission to help people discover, explore, and remember their museum experiences. This week's updates move us significantly closer to that vision.
Museum Visibility System: From Draft to Official
One of the biggest challenges we faced was understanding which museums were ready to showcase to visitors. Some have complete data with beautiful indoor maps, while others are just starting out. We needed a way to track this progression and help guide our curation efforts.
We've introduced a five-tier visibility system:
- Draft: Museums we're still researching and building out
- Listed: Basic information is complete, ready for discovery
- Verified: We've confirmed the data accuracy and added essential details
- Complete: Full indoor maps, opening hours, and rich descriptions
- Official: Partnership-level museums with comprehensive coverage
The system automatically promotes museums that have both a website and Wikipedia page to "listed" status, saving hours of manual work. For our admin team, we've added inline status selectors and filtering, making it easy to see where each museum stands in our curation pipeline.
Analytics That Actually Matter
"How many museums do we have?" seems like a simple question, but when you're tracking visibility status, tour availability, and growth over time, it gets complicated fast. We needed a flexible system that could track any metric and show us trends.
We built a comprehensive analytics system with:
- 8 core metrics: Museum counts by visibility status, platform totals, tour coverage, and more
- Three capture methods: TypeScript scripts for local dev, Supabase Edge Functions for HTTP triggers, and automated daily snapshots via pg_cron
- Historical tracking: Every metric is timestamped, so we can see our growth trajectory
- Admin-only access: Protected by Row Level Security to keep platform metrics private
The best part? It's completely extensible. Adding a new metric is as simple as defining its type and writing a capture function. We've already used it to discover that we have 53 museums with various visibility levels and 6 museums with complete tour coverage.
Enhanced Mapping Experience
Indoor mapping is at the heart of what makes Mooseum special. This week, we made significant improvements to how museum maps work:
Camera Control System: Museum maps now support custom camera configurations. Administrators can define the perfect starting position, rotation, tilt, and zoom level for each venue. No more awkward default views—every museum loads with the best possible perspective.
Floor Navigation: We've added a proper floor selector component for multi-story museums. While we're still refining the interaction patterns, the foundation is there for seamless vertical navigation.
Route Display: When planning tours, you can now see visual routes between waypoints, making it much easier to understand the flow through a museum.
Map Previews: Admin tools now show live map previews when editing venues, giving immediate visual feedback while configuring camera settings and tour routes.
Profile & Visit Tracking
Here's where things get personal. We've completely rebuilt the profile experience around one key insight: people want to remember where they've been and plan where they'll go.
The new Visit Calendar:
- Track unlimited visits: Add museum visits on any day, not just today
- Beautiful visualization: See your museum-going patterns at a glance
- Quick access: Visit counts on museum cards show your history at a glance
- Comprehensive testing: Over 1,500 test cases ensure reliability across time zones and edge cases
We've also enhanced timezone support (all 461 of them!), improved profile settings, and made it easier to discover museums in your area or countries you're planning to visit.
Better Content Display
Small details matter. This week we added:
- Markdown support for museum descriptions: Rich formatting for better storytelling
- Opening hours display: Clear, structured schedules with Wikipedia integration
- Wikipedia info cards: Quick access to additional context and history
- Refined FAQ: Restructured with two-column layout and better SEO
Developer Experience Improvements
Behind the scenes, we've been investing heavily in developer tooling:
- Storybook integration: Visual component testing with over 400 stories
- Comprehensive test coverage: Visit calendar alone has 1,500+ test cases
- Better migrations: Improved RLS policies and database structure
- Storage bucket setup: Automated creation of public-data and tour-audio buckets
- Enhanced scripts: Better TypeScript tooling with tsx for all scripts
What's Next?
This week's foundation enables several exciting features we're planning:
- Public analytics dashboards: Let visitors see platform growth and museum coverage
- Advanced museum search: Filter by visibility status, tours, opening hours, and more
- Visit streaks and achievements: Gamify museum exploration
- Social features: Share your favorite museums and see what friends are visiting
Try It Yourself
All of these features are live now at mooseum.app. Create a profile, explore museums in your area, and start tracking your visits. Whether you're in New York, London, or anywhere in between, we're building the tools to make every museum visit more memorable.
Have feedback or ideas? We'd love to hear from you. This is just the beginning.
Want to stay updated? Check back here regularly for more product updates as we continue building the future of museum experiences.