Organization:
Univ. of Birmingham

Location:
Birmingham, UK

Solution:
Interactive Display Walls, Tablets, & Hand-Held Devices

Objectives
  • Create a new type of museum environment that will appeal to today’s Internet-oriented visitor
  • Seamlessly integrate both the visitor experience and the researcher experience into a unified system
  • Analyze the needs of both levels of user, without being restricted by the technology itself

Goal

The University of Birmingham’s Digital Humanities Hub enriches heritage and cultural education. Stepping beyond just a typical “museum” experience, Birmingham wants its visitors to explore and interact with the artifacts, seeing and experiencing them in brand new ways. Instead of a curator determining the museum experience by selecting certain artifacts, the Hub allows the user’s interests to drive the experience. Without the boundaries of a traditional visit, the university wanted to track what the users were interested in and how they used the technology.

Solution

Excited to push the boundaries of the typical museum experience, Mechdyne and Birmingham developed a custom solution. Not only would Mechdyne provide interactive display walls, tables, and hand-held devices, the complete solution would support research. By tracking what exhibits the visitors select, how the visitors display the artifacts, and what they focus on, Birmingham understands exactly what the user does and when they do it, allowing them to take museums to a whole new level.

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