18/09/2020
Interactive Exhibits: Behind the Scenes…
When you see the finished item on display engaging with your visitors, it may be hard to imagine the behind the scenes work that has gone into it but this is utterly critical to the interactive being a success.
We can all imagine the kind of development and testing that goes into our everyday tried and tested purchases. Lightbulbs get turned off and on again to see how long they last, pillows are prodded to make sure they stay feeling like clouds, but it can be easy to not understand all of the extensive development work that goes into the production of a new interactive exhibit.
When you see the finished item on display engaging with your visitors, it may be hard to imagine the behind the scenes work that has gone into it but this is utterly critical to the interactive being a success.
For us, the first step towards a full quality and safety checked exhibit is the Design Risk Assessment. Before we put pen to paper (or mouse pointer to screen) our designers and technicians go through an exhibit and highlight any hazards and how we can adapt our approach to minimise if not design them out completely. The Design Risk Assessment does not stop there, as a design progresses, these risk assessments are reviewed and updated whenever needed. When you receive the first issue of an exhibit drawing from us, our completed Design Risk Assessments will also be issued.
Once exhibit drawings have been signed off and we are ready to move into production there are a number of ways we work not just collaboratively as a team, but also with you to ensure your interactive exhibit meets requirements and expectations.
For some of our more complex exhibits, we may need to carry out prototyping to make sure what we are planning on doing will work the way we intend it to. This gives us an opportunity to iron out any of the kinks early on. This prototyping stage may happen as early on as design, adding another layer of reassurance that what we are designing will work reliably and safely.
If there are certain materials we recommend or a certain way of doing something we may send you a sample to assess and feedback. This could be in the way of choosing the right colour, perhaps matching branding. It may even be a fixing method, making sure you are happy with the way we are safely producing a certain element of the interactive exhibit.
As your interactive exhibit progresses through the workshop, it is constantly under evaluation. At every point we are testing and checking for quality, robustness and safety as well as maintaining your vision.
With many of our projects we have hosted client visits to the workshop to review exhibits. This gives us invaluable feedback and the opportunity to make any final tweaks where needed. For you, this could be in the form of your project team coming to our workshop or it may be in the form of a public evaluation where we set up the exhibits and working with you, invite members of the public to come and see the exhibits and give valuable feedback.
Once complete, a final quality check of the exhibit as a whole is carried out along with testing. Remember the Design Risk Assessment from the very start? That is still being used as a reference to make sure we have dealt with all the hazards we highlighted.
Once installed on site we work with your teams to train on the use and maintenance of all your exhibits as well as issuing your Operation and Maintenance manual for future reference. Our work may not stop there, with our tailored maintenance contracts we can continue to work with you to maintain the quality, reliability, and safety of your exhibits.
We are experienced interactive exhibit design developers and builders, our aim from day one is to ensure your exhibits are the highest quality and 100% safe for your visitors to use and for your internal teams to maintain.

Lilly Northrop
Projects Engineer

