Greetings from the Titanic
Musealia
Sector:
Interactive Experience Design
Location:
Delft, The Netherlands
Year:
2025
Personal connection
For my master’s thesis with Musealia, I created an interactive experience for the Titanic exhibition that tackles a key challenge: the story is so well known that it often feels distant. Everyone knows the ship sank, but that familiarity can make it harder to see the real people behind the event.
To change this, visitors carry a postcard through the exhibition and collect stamps based on simple choices, such as what interests them most or what kind of story they want to follow. These choices gradually lead them to one of sixteen real passengers. At the end, they receive a printed message from that person and can write a response that becomes part of a digital archive.
The design had to create genuine emotional connection without feeling overwhelming. It uses tactile, low-tech elements like hand-carved stamps and hidden NFC tags, and it works in a traveling exhibition without any on-site technicians. User testing showed that people remembered their passenger and felt personally connected to their story, engaging with the human side of the tragedy in a thoughtful and balanced way.
Low-Tech design for emotional engagement
Because the exhibition was in Australia at that time, I had to find creative ways to research remotely. I analyzed over forty thousand visitor comments using Python to uncover what people were looking for in the experience. I also reviewed academic studies on emotional engagement in museums and invited participants to explore the exhibition in virtual reality, tracking where they spent time and how they felt in each space.
The research revealed that visitors wanted to feel personally involved rather than simply informed. Interactive moments worked best when spread throughout the space, and engagement grew when the usual rhythm of reading and observing was interrupted.
Through brainstorming and rapid prototyping, I tested ideas with real users and refined the concept step by step. The breakthrough came when I linked the historically accurate idea of a postcard from 1912 with a gradual reveal of a personal story. Each small interaction felt simple on its own, but together they built a meaningful emotional connection. By creating physical prototypes from laser-cut wood, I was able to fine-tune how the experience felt. The final design balances historical authenticity with active participation, allowing visitors to carry someone’s story with them even after they leave.