The Humboldt Forum Visitor Guide - Making the collections accessible to everyone

client: Stiftung Humboldt Forum

introduction

Humboldt Forum Visitor App Guide

The Humboldt Forum is Berlin's new cultural landmark offering a diversified point of view on the past, present, and future of world cultures. We helped this thrilling cultural institution to design a Visitor App to make the space and the collection accessible to everyone

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The challenge

How might we create an accessible Visitor Guide that meets the unique needs of the Humboldt Forum - one of the most unique centres for culture and science in Germany.

Humbolt Forum Visitor App

Good Design is Accessible Design

1

The main page provides access to all the functionalities in a simple way

2

When arriving to the app, every visitor can choose how they would like to experience it

3

Tours and maps help to make the best of the forum and its collection

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Designing together

Using an inclusive and human-centred design process, we worked closely with people with diverse abilities and from different backgrounds to ensure that the app addressed their needs.

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Adapting to the tone of the collection

The Humboldt Forum hosts—among other things—two large ethnographic collections. The approach to the design, as well as the tone of the guide, therefore, needed to take into account the sensitive nature of various elements of the collection.

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Empathising techniques

When focussing on accessibility, we always use empathising techniques, such as user persona and user journey. This places the team in the right mindset for accessible design. We always bring on board members of the target audience (in this case - visitors) for interviews and in-depth user testing.

Finding your way through the forum

The Humboldt Forum Visitor App makes it possible to quickly locate specific exhibits at the Museum and access further information, images or videos about the exhibitions.

Accessibility first

“How can we make the web app accessible for everyone, as the museum is also accessible to everyone?” For example, to make sure everyone can feel included while using the web app, the first thing the user sees is the settings, where they choose how the rest of the experience will be. This way, people don't need to search for the settings to customise their own experience.