Redefining the Interactive Museum Exhibit

Museums exist as unique spaces, but our purview was limited: gallery spaces could not be altered, signage could not be placed on display cases or the floor, additional equipment or fixtures couldn't be added, lighting could not be changed.

The experiences needed to enhance their existing spaces while providing an educational narrative that was engaging and captivating enough to sufficiently justify the additional ticket price. Throughput and reliability are also fundamental concerns. Groups of varying sizes needed to be able to use and move through a synced experience together at a steady, reliable pace, on a daily basis, year after year.

With that in mind, we designed each experience to be anchored creatively and physically within the gallery space where it would operate: In Paris, visitors chased extinct animals around physical display cases and watched them soar overhead; at Nausicaa Aquarium audiences gasped as giant sea creatures appeared to float out of a giant viewing tank; in London giant trees grow out of the floor as ecosystems surround and delight visitors.

So much work goes into creating the experience, but none of it matters if things break down when real world conditions come into play. Visitors will ignore directions. Equipment will fail. Staff will need to be replaced mid-show.

Drawing on our 20+ years of experiential production experience, we knew that the equipment needed to be dependable, easy to use, easy to maintain, and easy to replace. After testing multiple devices and solutions, we opted to use the HoloLens 2, with it's dependable tracking, wider field of view and long-lasting, easily replaceable battery.

We built back-office applications for hardware management and developed processes so that museum staff could easily assign, group and distribute the headsets; choose between different languages; clearly see when batteries needed to be replaced; swap out equipment when it failed; and organize and clean headsets for reuse.

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When so much of the digital world exists in the narrow, self-contained space of ones own personal device, these experiences offer a unique departure. Free from the limitations of a single-user interaction or the siloed space of a VR experience, Mixed Reality frees the visitor to view, move, participate and interact with others as they would normally. A digital experience layer adds context, interactivity, and narrative storytelling without being too intrusive or overwhelming.

Designed for group participation, these attractions provide a participatory, interactive shared experience that is so rare in this day and age. It is truly wondrous to share a feeling of awe with friends and family, knowing that everyone is experiencing the same thing, at the same time, together.

Built in collaboration with Saola Studio, who wrote and produced the experiences, with contributions from Wide&Wide. Gimbal Cube provided all mixed-reality experience development, application development, headset management and deployment, on-site location tracking and calibration. Venues: Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris), Nausicaá Aquarium (Northern France), and the Natural History Museum (London).