We built a touchscreen app with lots of interactive design features about the Mayflower Pilgrims who first sailed to America in 1620 and their connection with North Lincolnshire.
North East Lincolnshire council wanted us to design and build engaging digital learning content, so it can be on display at Immingham Museum for their brand new permanent exhibition ‘The Mayflower Pilgrims’ Journey of Discovery’ in readiness for the 2020 commemorations of the Mayflower ship sailing 400 years ago.
They already had lots information about who the Pilgrims were, the route of the journey they made across Lincolnshire and their eventual escape to Holland. But they needed to be able to present that information in a way that was fun and engaging and accessible to a wide audience. One of the main drivers for the project was to ensure that the town’s connection to the Mayflower story wasn’t forgotten, so the content needed to resonate with children and young people who were perhaps learning the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims for the very first time.
We decided that a touch-screen application would be the best way to make the learning experience as interactive and immersive as possible. So, we built the content in Intuiface, which allowed us to make it quickly but still in HTML5.
We also felt that we needed to break the information up into bite-sized chunks and various sections – otherwise the content might have been in danger of being a bit too overwhelming – and this made it feel much lighter and a lot more accessible.
Also, being able to swipe through the content to each section, in the order of the events surrounding the Pilgrim’s exile to Holland, takes the user on a ‘journey’ of their own.
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We used interactive design techniques such as scrolling graphics and dragable features to give the user the impression that they were able to control the content and the recreated 17th century map of Lincolnshire (including the old spellings of towns and villages in county), which shows the route the Mayflower Pilgrims took across Lincolnshire, manages to bring their escape through Immingham to life.
We created a section called ‘Pilgrims Fun’, which was packed full of alternative activities and content to engage with the younger users. Children and adults can go in this area and enjoy themselves whilst subtly learning about this period in history. For example, the dress a Pilgrim area teaches people about the kind of clothing people wore 400 years ago, as well as being lots of fun.
“From concept to design and implementation it has been a pleasure to work with First Media. They interpreted our need to create an interactive display that complemented the new exhibition, bringing to life the journey that the Mayflower Pilgrims made. They came up with some great ideas for each of the sections for us to tell our story and provide more in depth information to our visitors. The children’s section in particular has been big hit with visitors since the installation went in.”
Deborah Cooper, North East Lincolnshire Council
Forensic Access
If you’d like to speak to us about how we might be able to help you with your next project, call us on 01507 607783.
