April was a happy month for all of us at HOL. The National Institute of Education Visitors Learning Centre (NIE VLC) finally opened after more than two years of work. We curated both its content and multimedia experiences. The centre showcases the institute’s role in teacher education in both Singapore and around the world.

To be honest, while we were working on the project, it felt like the NIEVLC would never open. Things that could go wrong would. Things that we had planned for never seemed to materialise.

But now, looking at the newly minted visitors centre, we can’t help but feel a sense of pride.

What am I most proud of?

The NIE Experience Interactive Wall.

For multimedia experiences, the easiest thing to do is to input the content into iPads, or to make it fancier, giant touchscreens. Or have a handful of QR codes within the space. That’s it.

But what does that mean? No surprises for visitors.

What we wanted was something NIEVLC visitors could play with. If they could have fun with it, they would remember the experience even after leaving the centre. We didn’t want technology for technology’s sake. We wanted a powerful, memorable experience.

It wasn’t difficult to come up with the idea. And I must credit our client for going ahead with it even when it was only an idea initially. Our idea was to summarise NIE’s unique experiences into 13 touch points. When visitors touch on these points, these experiences become animated, complete with colours and sounds.

The idea got the green light easily, but its execution was quite beyond our expectations. Countless meetings later and we were still not anywhere near an agreement on which 13 experiences to present. And when we eventually got that settled, it was then an even longer process of deciding the graphics and animations.

But it’s all worth it.

I’m glad we pushed the boundaries.

When the interactive wall was finally up, and when we saw visitors’ faces light up when they interacted with the wall, we know we made it and did it well.

And we would want to do it again.

Angeline Tong is an architect of narratives and Chief Curator at HOL, an experience strategy and curation consultancy. Angeline has a Master of Education (Human Development & Psychology) from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Museum Studies from Harvard University. She currently resides in Singapore.

To contact Angeline, email atong@hol.sg