A major new gallery exhibition entitled ‘Mann at War’ has opened at the Manx Museum in Douglas to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One. The exhibition showcases hundreds of important objects, including the oldest Napoleonic light cavalry uniform in the British Isles, and aims to commemorate the role of Manx men, women and children in conflict from the 1700’s to the present day.
Manx National Heritage commissioned Gooii to develop a touchscreen digital interactive user interface to allow visitors to explore the personal human stories and the impact of conflict on Isle of Mann residents. High definition touchscreens kiosks are placed throughout the gallery, visitors explore the themes, eras and personal stories using the touchscreens. Visitors can also scan a QR code to view the stories and themes on their devices as they explore further, allowing them to continue exploring at home, as the interactive content is also visible on the web as part of Manx National Heritage iMuseum, which Gooii also developed.
For this project, Gooii partnered with Knowledge Integration, and worked closely with Manx National Heritage to develop and launch the system, with the CIIM middleware producing Elasticsearch data for the UI. The user interface itself is built using a combination of PHP and ReactJs.