The Royal Museum Project
NMS
Goals
The Royal Museum Project is a multi-million pound gallery redevelopment of the Royal Museum building within the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. The ground breaking re-development has provided new and improved access to a wealth of exhibits from the vast Museum collection, 80% of which haven't been on view for a generation.
The project aims to combine the historic with the contemporary, helping visitors engage and learn on a variety of levels throughout the space. As part of this engagement strategy, the Museum included a range of interpretive techniques including hands-on and digital interactives and audio visual presentations to bring the stories behind the objects to life.
As part of this strategy, the Museum commissioned Preloaded to develop six core interactive exhibits with varied subject matter and learning outcomes.
Solution
The National Museum of Scotland identified five subjects they wanted to bring to life through interactive exhibits, providing the background information and key learning requirements for each exhibit. We took that information and devised interactive mechanics which would provide a game like experience in each case, taking into account how people would want to interact in a gallery space, how long they would spend and what learnings could be achieved in that time, all for a wide age range audience. We worked closely with the Museum experts and visited the gallery regularly to make sure we were getting the balance right.
We developed the following interactive experiences:
- Human Decisions - Reintroduce Wolves back into the Scottish habitat in this witty & wild simulation game. Make the right decisions to succeed and bring biodiversity back.
- World Music Composer - Explore world music in a visually engaging, fun and educational interactive application turning visitors into musicians, with a special focus on Scottish ethnomusicologist, Jean Jenkins.
- Telescope Images - Search the night sky using a joystick to locate a variety of celestial objects and reveal exciting images ranging from Hubble telescope images through to hand-drawn images of the moon.
- Fish - A touchscreen activity where visitors camouflage fish using the correct patterns and colour schemes to make sure their fish aren't spotted by hungry predators.
- Making faces - Help young people to develop their creative skills by making their own individual human and animal face which can then be emailed to print out at home to turn into a mask or poster.
Results
The National Museum of Scotland re-opened to rave reviews in the summer of 2011, with the interactive installations proving to be highly popular focal points in the gallery space.