The Science Museum attracts over 2.5 million visitors each year and is one of the largest museums in the world, renowned for its historic collections, awe-inspiring galleries and inspirational exhibitions. 

Project

The Who Am I? Gallery is the Science Museum’s popular and award-winning biomedical gallery that first opened in 2000. Through a sensory mix of computer interactive exhibits and object-rich displays it covers contemporary genetics and brain science.

Objectives

As part of the museums centenary celebrations the gallery was redeveloped exploring five main themes of human identity. The primary objective was to develop attractive and intriguing designs that were intuitive to use and more engaging for the target audience than the collection already on display. 

IGNITION won a contract to redevelop two interactives for the Who Am I? Gallery.  The first, titled Recognising Emotions had to communicate to visitors that people from all around the world not only experience the same six basic emotions – fear, sadness, disgust, surprise, anger and happiness, but also use the same facial expressions to show these emotions. 

The second, titled Staying Alive had to communicate how your health, and ultimately your life span, is determined through a complex interaction between the genes you inherit, your environment and your life-style choices.

Results

The IGNITION team developed Deadpan Droids, two robot characters Dean and Dina, who couldn't recognise emotions. Using a bold and bright illustrative style, the concept of the game saw the robots travelling from their planet to a human planet to gather emotions illustrated through facial expressions. IGNITION commissioned studio photography of people displaying the six basic emotions. Visitors are presented with a screen showing different emotions and are asked to identify a different emotion on each level. Collecting all six emotions correctly reveals a celebratory dance as Dean and Dina take the emotions back to their planet. 

Billie's Genes was designed by IGNITION o reveal to visitors how health and life expectancy arises from a complex interaction between genes, environment and lifestyle choices.  This was achieved through a touchscreen exhibit where visitors could choose to be one of four characters. Visitors are asked to make lifestyle choices for the character as they proceed through life from infancy to the point of death. When the virtual character dies, the causes are revealed which are a combination of inherited genes, lifestyle choices and random environmental factors.

To increase the educational quality of the exhibits, IGNITION integrated additional layers of scientific information to the interactives, this offered increased learning to those outside of the target age range. 

The games were passed through various stages of rigorous audience and robustness testing to ensure the finished interactives were appealing and able to withstand the heavy use in the gallery.