Hi, I’m Dhruv, and I’m a second year Computer Scientist at the University of Bristol. Along with 5 other team members, as part of our Software Product Engineering module, we are creating an interactive web-app for the Egypt Exhibition at the Bristol Museum.

The purpose of this web-app is to allow visitors to the museum to browse the exhibition whilst viewing more information about each of the exhibits on their phones, instead of the currently implemented kiosks. The following is a light technical overview of how it works.

The web-app is built on a full javascript stack involving Node.js and Express on the back-end and AngularJS on the front-end. Using frameworks based around the same language made it even easier for all members of our team to get involved with all parts of the application, as these skills easily transfer. Our system builds the website based on data exported from EMu, meaning that any updates to exhibit contents are easily displayed – be that tweaks to artefact data, or entire cabinet changes. We make this happen by designing templates for the specific types of page that exist, and use AngularJS to dynamically inject the appropriate content when the page is requested.

We decided to create a solution in this way as we felt it allowed a closer interaction with the content, along with dealing with the issue of multiple people using the kiosk at the same time. It also allows for user’s current accessibility settings (such as larger text for those with visual impairments) to be carried over.

The web-app is still in development, but some screenshots of the current implementation can be seen below.

We’ve been carrying out some user testing, and have had quite a bit of good feedback. Thanks to anyone who took the time to fill out our feedback forms!

Overall, the project has been thoroughly interesting, as it’s allowed me to expand my technical skills, but also through seeing bits of what makes Bristol Museum work smoothly.