The museum, designed by the award-winning French architect Jean Nouvel, not only tells the rich history of Qatar. It also tells the story of its inhabitants, from the distant past into the future. The exhibition is organized across eleven individual galleries spread over 1.5 km.
This architectural masterpiece was inspired by desert roses, crystallised sand that can be found in the desert regions of Qatar.
I was leading a team in designing a system and guide for 25 interactive displays. The displays were of varying sizes and detailed a vareity of content in both English and Arabic. We knew that simplicity was key.
TYPOGRAPHY
COLOURS
"Create a design language and system that creates consistency across all exhibitions while still allowing enough flexibility for each individual exhibit to convey its message."
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF QATAR
TEASER
OBJECTS GRID VIEW
OBJECTS SINGLE VIEW
OBJECT INFORMATION
OBJECT ZOOM
TEASER
THEMES LIST
THEME ARTICLE
THEME ARTICLE TIMELINE
VIDEO PLAYER
TEASER
INTERACTIVE MAP
INTERACTIVE MAP
How we did it
DISCOVERY & IDEATION
While we were in Qatar we held workshops with key stakeholders and over 50 interviews with visitors to the museum. The demographic was broad; all age groups, english and arabic speakers with both tourists and locals alike. Our key findings were that the screens needed to be simple, easy to use and didn’t get in the way of the experience.
PRINCIPLES
With these insights we develoed our design and user experience principles:
• With a very wide variety of exhibits the design language would need the flexibility to adapt to any given content and exhibit functionality.
• Newly created assets within the design system would have an ownable style. One that is unique to NMOQ.
• The system needs to be simple and consistent for the visitor to understand and for the agencies to implement.
VALIDATNG AND TESTING
We developed our initial sketches into wireframes for testing. We were able to settle on a hub and spoke navigation system, found that one language at a time was better than two and were able to calculate our minimum type sizes in each language on each screen size.
REFINEMENT AND USABILITY
We refined high fidelity concepts to test both aesthetics and usability with the client and users.
IMPACT
The National Museum Of Qatar was unveiled in March 2019 along with our interactive displays. Visitors are still using them today.
The museum welcomed more than 450,000 visitors in less than a year of its opening.
Time magazine named it one of the World's Greatest Places to Visit, citing the integration of "immersive video screens and dioramas" into Jean Nouvel's architectural design.
TEAM
Hugo Simon / Robin Gardeur / Ricardo Amorim / Yuriy Starikov
ROLE
Design Lead
AGENCY
AllOfUs