Bringing the museum experience to life through digital interactives
The National Museum of Australia's Endeavour 250 exhibition tells the story of James Cook and the voyage of the HMB Endeavour up the east coast of Australia.
Cypha were asked to design and develop an exhibition interactive and online experience which explores the botanical specimens collected on the HMB Endeavour voyage.
The objective of the interactive is to allow visitors to understand how the first European scientific collections of Australian flora were collected and documented while showcasing the Indigenous meaning and use for the plants within Indigenous communities.
Together with the team at NMA, Cypha managed the end to end delivery of this project from design through to development.
Designs were created taking into consideration the need to tell both the story of the ‘view from the ship’, that being James Cook and crew, as well as the ‘view from the shore’ from the Indigenous people of Australia.
The interface for both the exhibition interactive and online experience was designed in custom illustration from the perspective of the Indigenous people. HTML5, CSS3 and javascript was used when developing the digital interface, with parallax used to create interest and movement.
The touch interactive enables users to explore three different locations and a range of plant specifies found at each location. As a user swipes through the touch experience, content such as images, audio, video and copy can be opened, closed, enlarged, zoomed and played.
Online users are offered a similar experience without touch across desktop and mobile.
