In 2022 Novo Nordisk approached us with a challenge. The following year, 2023, the company was planning to celebrate their 100 year anniversary. Mindful that corporate celebrations occasionally can be perceived as vain and inwardly focused, we were challenged to create a digital experience that made people from both inside and outside the organisation recognise the milestone. How could we shine a light on the past in a way that was relevant to the present and – considering the company’s impact on public health –  to society at large? How could we engage audiences in a new and surprising way?


Solution
Guided by the creative concept of ‘unseen connections’ we created an immersive 3D digital exhibition experience that invites visitors to discover Novo Nordisk’s rich history through a multitude of intriguing entry points: artefacts, biographies, photos, videos, and stories.

Much like a physical exhibition, the digital space is curated and literally laid out as quests on a map, but how the visitor chooses to explore, is entirely up to the individual. The personal experience is possible using an open navigation system, whereby visitors can navigate freely around the exhibition space either using an interactive map, or by following a defined path – which they can also choose to stray from.

To capture the attention of the audience our team used 3D models to faithfully reproduce key physical artefacts, allowing them to be experienced in new ways such as on a mobile phone or in augmented reality.

To achieve the level of immersion, we had to iterate extensively with frequent user testing to gauge the needs of the potential audience. However, when working in 3D we learned that everything comes at a cost. Performance is paramount, and breaking immersion for even a moment breaks the spell of exploration. Simple requests from users, such accessing the map, were in reality complex to solve, due to performance costs. Perhaps the most difficult challenge of all, was curating the 3D space on digital content management systems that weren’t built for such elements. This required developing several custom tools ourselves to bridge the gap.

The digital heritage experience is launched as a stand-alone digital platform, but is also integrated into a physical Novo Nordisk heritage experience in two ways: Via QR codes implemented on the exhibition boards - visitors are given the option to learn more, or for example explore an artefact in augmented reality – and via a multiple screen set-up, which can be navigated by the visitor.

Further info about the technical solution:

Built in three.js
3D site connected to a headless CMS
Custom tools created to map content in a 3D environment
Runtime performance Solid 30fps - across all devices
Single load of 30mb for the entire experience, over 150 artefacts
Map view is runtime
Performance optimisations such as instancing, sampling based on camera position

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