Workhouse Museum Touchscreen

User Interface Design for National Trust

National Trust point-of-information kiosk revamp for Southwell Workhouse

The 19th Century workhouse in Southwell, Nottinghamshire is the National Trust’s most complete example of a workhouse in existence, consisting of work yards, day rooms, dormitories, master’s quarters and cellars.

The Southwell Workhouse museum’s original interactive kiosk system developed over ten years ago was no longer working and needed attention. The content was designed for much small displays and required remedial post-production to bring everything up to an acceptable standard. Thinkamigo and .net production partner Headland Multimedia salvaged the existing assets and built a whole new user interface and back-end database to support the system.

“Consumer expectations are much higher these days particularly among young visitors” says Thinkamigo Creative Director Paul Fillingham.

“Our approach was to redesign [the kiosk application] with modern HD displays in mind and bring iPad-styling to the user interface”.

Since Southwell’s original installation, touch-screen operation has become much more commonplace due to widespread adoption of consumer tablet devices like the Apple iPad.

Thinkamigo worked on the creative and user-interface design with production partner Headland providing back-end [Microsoft .net] programming. The new system is effectively a searchable database of workhouse sites allowing visitors to find locations throughout the UK. The simple menu system provides access to hundreds of images and facts collected by respected workhouse historian Peter Higginbotham.

“By adopting web standards the kiosk can be easily expanded in the future” said Headland’s Ken Heptonstall.

Whilst the system currently exists as a standalone system within the museum, there is future potential for opening up via web delivery platforms including web, tablet and mobile phones.