NEMO touch screen applications

NEMO is a science center based in the middle of Amsterdam and is by far one of the coolest museums in the Netherlands. The people at NEMO focus on creating science exhibitions specially for kids. Forget the boring experiments everyone had to go through at school and imagine a place filled with exhibitions where you are expected to touch and explore everything. After a visit to NEMO, you will know why bridges are so strong, what you will look like in 30 years, why you look so much like your parents, how to purify water, what happens when you kiss, how lightning and satellites work and much more.

The first touch screen application we created serves as the starting point for all visitors at the main exhibition Phenomena. We also created two touch screen applications for the exhibition "Search for life". The applications explain how scientists create life (Miller-Urey experiment) and show the most spectacular attempts to find life out in space.

Gallery: Phenomena

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When you walk into Nemo, one of the first things you might see is this yellow arrow. Built into this arrow is a touch screen which runs an application designed and built by monsters. The touch screen is situated right in between the first exhibitions on the floor. All the different exhibitions on the floor that are about both ordinary and extraordinary natural phenomena can be found in the application. The different themes such as gravity, light, sound and static electricity all float on a watery surface. Interacting with these phenomena manipulates the water and the position of the other phenoma, giving people a playful interface to the information about the different exhibitions. To keep the application both functional and playful, the feeling of physical interaction is important. To make sure we had this covered we prototyped and storyboarded all the animations. These wireframes are part of the design documentation. These storyboards gave the client a good idea of what to expect. And they were a clear blueprint for the developers to create the desired effect in a short amount of time.

Flash demo: Interactive background

The touch screen that is used in NEMO reacts to touch as if you touch water. The wrinkles, that you can now create with your mouse, push the floating clickable phenomena around the screen. The phenomena can also be thrown around, this altogether provides a playful interface to rather static information.

Gallery: Search for life

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People have always been fascinated with space and one of the reasons for this is to find out if we are alone in this universe. Many space missions have been undertaken since the space race and you can find more information on some of the most ground breaking ones in this touch screen application. A total of 12 spaceships fly in and out of this screen. If you click on them they shortly spin out of control after which a video starts about the particular space mission. The Miller-Urey experiment tries to recreate the chemical landscape of the birth of the earth, hoping to find the origin of life. At NEMO you can see this experiment at work and find more information on the experiment and it's results on the touch screen that was developed by monsters. The balance between fun and function is very important at Nemo. All the exhibitions have a playful element and scream for attention. Creating an application for that environment is both challenging and fun!
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Science Center NEMO

Client: Science Center NEMO
Project: Three touch screen applications
Work: Interaction design, Adobe Flash
Partner: Edenspiekermann
Graphic design
Driebit
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