Building an Interactive Digital Museum: Part 1

Liz Dom
SiGNL
Published in
4 min readJun 12, 2017
The FinTech Times, a made-up newspaper we created for the digital museum.

From an idea, to concept, strategy, prototype, execution and build — what normally takes six months to a year to bring to life, Inquisition and SiGNL were able to create in three months: an interactive, digital museum experience for a specialist bank.

Custom Ideation & Build

The brief was multi-layered: Create an experience which pairs various learning outcomes with real-world innovations, tools and methodologies used across the globe, either today or in the future.

The idea was this: A “Digital Safari” that takes visitors around the world, showcasing innovations, startups and client products stemming from the region or echoing what the region is doing in this field. Now, of course, we can’t actually fly visitors to six global destinations, so we opted for the next best thing — dividing the client’s auditorium into six rooms, creating an immersive, technologically-driven learning experience right there and then. You could even get your passport stamped.

Our work never takes place in isolation, so from the get-go, we worked closely with our client in dreaming up the initial concept, researching its various moving parts, creating a prototype, tweaking the idea as we went along and putting the necessary processes, communication and teams in place to carry out our respective tasks.

This idea; how it was created and brought to life, was the result of a synergy between our team and our client and can’t be duplicated. Each one of our solutions is custom-fit for your needs and no client’s needs are the same as the next.

Access to Innovation

One of the reasons we were approached in the first place is our broad skills-base (our team’s made up of a Sociologist, Scientist, Artist, Computer Engineer, Lawyer and Technologist), our thirst for knowledge and sharing, our design methodologies and outcomes, as well as a direct access to cutting-edge, modern innovation.

By applying the Design lens on our own work and processes, we’re able to stay connected to the latest news and trends, keep our ear to the ground for sound theories and methodologies and experiment with current and upcoming technologies in our lab. We’re always cooking.

Our “Cyber Security” room with face, touch and voice activations.

Close Collaboration in Client Partnership

Without close client collaboration, little of what we do would exist. We like to embed ourselves within your organisation for the duration of our service offering. That way, we learn to think like you, and we can advise from an unbiased, objective vantage point with key insights intrinsically linked to your organisation.

Our team was tasked with creating an interactive, digital museum experience, but in order to do this, we had to mine a whole lot of research and information. None of this would’ve been possible without the effortless baton-passing between our team and the client’s. By working so closely together, we were able to form a new, hybrid team. A team where the labels of “service provider” and “client” fall away, to a certain extent, to achieve a common goal.

Client feedback sourced from visitors moving through one of the rooms which highlighted a client-centric approach to business.

At the end of the day, we’re problem solvers. We provide the framework for identifying the best possible solution for a scenario, and the capability to change as needed, as quickly as needed.

Speed of Execution & Adaptable in Implementation

Which brings us to our speed of execution and adaptability in implementation. Inquisition and SiGNL not only create a custom-fit solution for your project, but is able to create and adapt as needed, making sure no stone’s unturned, all assumptions are quelled and that we’re delivering the best, up-to-date offering available.

Our journey creating an interactive digital museum experience was filled with sweat, but certainly no blood and tears. Join us, next time, as we cover how we created the technology used for every room, and why.

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Liz Dom
SiGNL
Writer for

Designer @ BetterWork, SiGNL. Artist. Life-ist/er.