Screens and digital kiosks offer an interactive 'heartbeat' in the museum dedicated to the heart

Raise awareness and prevent cardiovascular disease visually, interactive and fun for children and adults is the goal of Halle Heart Children' Museum, an installation that encourages through screens and digital kiosks to reach 'the heart' to teach and educate.

Located in the town of Tempe (Arizona – United States), Halle Heart Children' Museum is an innovative installation of 16.000 square meters specialized in practical and interactive cardiovascular learning that attracts 30.000 annual visitors, mainly children, to encourage heart-healthy habits (exercise, healthy eating, Etc.) in a playful way, visual and participatory.

Until a few months ago, this museum belongs to the American Heart Association (Aha), it was only open for guided tours for schoolchildren and private groups that were accompanied on their tour by professional guides who explained the contents.

At the end of October 2014, the AHA decided to open the doors of the museum to the general public (children and families, chiefly), although one of the problems they had was that they could not afford to have more professionals to guide the groups full-time.

Its leaders looked for a way to launch a self-guided tour, that in addition to creating a dynamic and interactive experience that will generate interest in the exhibition, it will also be in line with the limited budget of this institution.

Economic challenges

As Len Gutman explains, director of Philanthropy at Halle Heart Children's Museum, "We look at the hand maps and audio tours, but in the end we decided that through a digital kiosk I would have a more favorable experience for children and the general public".

Although there was a new challenge to be faced: the economic one, since it was a non-profit entity it did not have the resources to finance the expenses of that installation, the solution came from the hand of the local technology company Insight Enterprises, who became involved in the project as a corporate partner, as well as offering a scholarship that would allow the museum to pursue its ambitions to implement digital kiosks.

parallel, AHA found the manufacturer of digital kiosks Meridian the ideal collaborator to design a robust and personalized digital system. adapted both to the informative needs and to the budgetary limitations of the museum.

Self-guided digital tour

In this joint development work, the museum had specific parameters of content and audience: digital kiosks not only had to offer a child-friendly interface, but maximum security and a very attractive design, depending on the screen, size and height for its users.

Under these requirements, the digital kiosks designed by Meridian have a thin profile to be able to locate them glued to the wall and are screwed to the ground, in order to prevent them from overturning and falling on a child.

Its outward appearance, made by Insight Enterprises is as colorful as the one in the museum itself and are personalized with your pet, Lud Dub, dressed as the comic book superhero Red Crusader.

In addition, these systems incorporate screens designed ex profeso, in size and height adapted to different levels of the child visitor, so that several children can gather around the digital kiosk and watch videos at the same time, which are also displayed on large format digital signage screens.

Halle Heart Children' Museum features six Meridian digital kiosks that provide young visitors with a self-guided tour, which begins with a short video with information about the museum and details on how to interact in each showroom.

These systems use, for the time being, the 'kiosk mode' integrated into the Google Chrome browser to run the contents and not specific software for reasons of cost and the limited resources of this institution.

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