It’s a Ship. It’s a Museum.

Musée Maritime boasts a fine collection of ship-museums, one of which you can board: the icebreaker Ernest Lapointe. 

The ship has been in the museum’s collection since 1980, and open to visitors after refurbishment in 2011. Its exhibition consisted of a self-guided tour with interpretive stations  of text and images about its operations. 

That meant a lot of info panels, some of them quite large, all over the site. This did not deliver the desired immersive experience. So the museum decided to seek a digital solution to improve their presentation of the Ernest Lapointe. 

A New Approach

Museum staff thought a digital format could help. They removed those large panels and replaced them with small posters bearing a QR code and NFC chip. Visitors with smartphones are now able to access textual, photographic, video, and audio content that offers a more immersive experience of life on an icebreaker. 

Even in winter, when the Ernest Lapointe cannot be boarded, the tour remains available. Extra photos are added to show people the ship’s interior. A timer can be set to show this content in winter and hide it in summer.