Starting with Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair, potential visitors outside of the museum were invited to “See what they saw” though outdoor, pre-roll, TV and social. The app let them interact by taking a peak back in time to the Fair’s wonders, as well as plan out what they wanted to see by creating their own tour.

At the museum, the first scanned artifact opened a host of stories though motion activated 360° panoramas, film, audio and pictures. Scientists and experts told stories and took visitors into the vaults to see more. Each artifact was socially shareable with their friends.

It became part of the museum’s offering, allowing it to curate tours using it’s own collections without the expense of building grand exhibition spaces. They now made use of their in-house scientists and experts that were otherwise out of sight in backroom labs.

Potential visitors could be enticed with all that’s on offer than could be communicated through advertising. With visitors rating items the museum could focus resources on items that resonated the most to curate future exhibitions.

The first two weeks saw over 10,000 downloads with almost a quarter of visitors making use of it. 63% created their own personal tours and the museum received hundreds of user submitted tours.

The app kept them coming back, the museum saw a spike in return visitors within 60 days of download. With new tours and content easily added it was designed to live on and keep them coming back.