Navigate the past

Maritime Museum

Who we worked with:: Maritime Museum

What we did:: Experience design Design Build Improve

Check it out:: maritimemuseum.co.nz

Navigate the maritime collection as part of a new interactive exhibition

The Maritime Museum in Auckland, New Zealand approached us with a brief to create a unique experience for visitors to their "Captains, Collectors, Friends & Adventurers" exhibition. The museum aimed to connect physical items from the exhibition with the digital world while also encouraging an emotional connection with visitors. The secondary objective was to enable visitors to contribute information about their connections to the exhibition content.

To achieve these goals, NV Interactive utilized a user-led design approach, holding facilitated workshops to identify visitor needs and how the museum could connect objects in the collection to personal storytelling. The team generated ideas and refined a "cabinet of curiosities" concept, which was a universally liked metaphor for collecting and sharing stories. While each item had its own story to tell, when brought together as a set, threads of connections began to weave their way through the different items, showing the significance of each item to each visitor in their unique web.

The final solution was a "cabinet of curiosities" web app for exploring, collecting, and connecting with physical objects in the collection. The app was displayed on an 80-inch touchscreen that allowed visitors to interact with the digital collection at scale, act as a visual magnet, and encourage participation in the exhibition. Users could connect to the web app via a QR code and add their collections to the display using their phones. The solution was scalable and capable of future enhancement and repurposing for future exhibition content.

The Maritime Museum's 'Captains, Collectors, Friends & Adventurers' exhibition provided a distinctive and unforgettable experience for visitors. The digital interactive allowed visitors to contribute information about their personal connections to the exhibition content, connecting physical items with the online world, and encouraging visitors to delve deeper into individual items. The large touchscreen and web app were the ideal way to invite visitors to engage with and explore the museum's hidden treasures.

Using touchscreens, visitors explored the collections

The app was displayed on an 80-inch touchscreen, which not only enabled visitors to interact with the digital collection on a larger scale but also acted as a visual attraction, enticing participation into the exhibition.