The opening of the new First World War gallery at the Imperial War Museum marks 100 years since the start of that devastating conflict. The gallery is also a centrepiece of the regeneration of the museum for the 21st Century.

I joined the Imperial War Museum’s Digital Producer Jo Saull on the exhibition team, six months ahead of the First World War gallery’s opening.

My main focus was managing delivery of the multiple interactive exhibits within the gallery featuring novel interfaces such as camera based gesture recognition, touch sensitive objects and multi-touch screens.

I oversaw the development of these interactive experiences, by external contractors ISO and Squint Opera, on behalf of the museum. This meant intelligently synthesising feedback from the exhibition content team, the museum’s in-house digital department and exhibition designers Casson Mann with user testing results in order to provide coherent, actionable direction for the software developers. As opening neared it also meant working closely with the museum’s hardware installation contractor Sysco AV, prop makers Paragon Creative and exhibition construction managers Fraser Randall in order to get the exhibits up and running in time for the opening of the gallery by Prince William.