The Spy Museum was getting a new building in the heart of D.C. and Gallagher & Associates was called to help reimagine the visitor experience with new interactive exhibits and many more films to reveal the clandestine world of spy craft for visitors.
As part of my role as Visual Experience Designer at Gallagher & Associates, I led the creation of the 21st Century Eavesdropping experience and contributed to the UX/UI of the Red Teaming exhibit. Additionally, I was the main designer for over ten films featured in the museum, including the Spies & Spymasters exhibit space. I also worked on early concepts and helped supervise the development of the Trojan Horse exhibit. My focus was to create engaging and interactive visual experiences, blending cutting-edge technology with historical espionage narratives to educate and intrigue visitors.
This involved in-depth research into espionage history, followed by the design of interactive elements that brought these stories to life, offering visitors an engaging and educational journey. Early concepts were presented and refined internally for the interactive exhibits in 21st Century Eavesdropping and Red Teaming. Once we finished concept work on Trojan Horse, we contracted Olga Studio to finalize the designs and then later asked them to complete the animations for 21st Century Eavesdropping.
The 21st Century Eavesdropping exhibit and Red Teaming experience utilized interactive displays and multimedia presentations to create an immersive environment. We hosted at least three different user testing sessions with various stakeholders in our NYC prototyping space. I also created all the storyboards for 21st Century Eavesdropping's three films, developing a custom illustrated style that Olga then animated. For Spies & Spymasters, each character and their story needed to follow with their environment and time that they were active. We designed and iterated on key moments in the experience where our spy would speak to the audience, and finalized them once the exhibits were installed.
This project underscored the importance of integrating historical narratives with modern design techniques to create memorable visitor experiences. We are proud of the exciting new experiences in the International Spy Museum and how were were able to handle such a large volume and wide variety of experiences that make up the visitor experience.
