Interactive In-Gallery Experience for Cultural Interpretation
Create an immersive in-gallery experience that allows museum visitors to engage more deeply with objects on display. Through an interactive image viewer, visitors can explore annotated hotspots on a featured artifact using touch-based and zoom functionality on a digital kiosk.
BACKGROUND
The North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) is a landmark cultural institution with two expansive buildings and a 164-acre park. In 2024, the Museum identified an opportunity to enhance in-gallery interpretation through interactive digital tools that could bring stories and context directly to visitors at the object level. The initial project focused on Reuben Eschwege’s Torah Binder from 1947, funded by donor support with the intent to inspire future expansions across exhibitions.
THE CHALLENGE
NCMA sought a flexible and scalable solution to enhance visitor engagement using touchscreen kiosks in the gallery space. The image viewer needed to provide magnification, bilingual content, hotspot annotations, and a compelling visual design optimized for public interaction. Additionally, the museum required that the viewer be embeddable across multiple web platforms for educational outreach and future content reuse. Constraints included a fixed budget, the need to use existing WordPress infrastructure, and a tight delivery deadline.
