Vestige

01

Overview

What is the project?

Vestige is an immersive browser-based digital museum that transforms historical artifacts into cinematic, interactive experiences. Rather than presenting history through static images and descriptive text, Vestige places visitors inside a carefully choreographed digital exhibition where every artifact is treated as a living exhibit.

Category

Creative Technology · Digital Heritage · Interactive 3D Experience · Cultural Technology

What does it do?

Vestige allows visitors to explore museum-quality 3D artifacts in real time through cinematic transitions, dynamic lighting, spatial presentation, and contextual storytelling. Every exhibit is designed to encourage curiosity rather than passive observation.

Who is it for?

• Museums
• Cultural institutions
• Educators
• Students
• Researchers
• History enthusiasts
• Exhibition designers
• Digital heritage initiatives

02

The Problem

Traditional digital museums often replicate physical galleries without rethinking the experience for digital media. Artifacts become static images accompanied by long descriptions, reducing engagement and limiting emotional connection.

At the same time, many cultural collections remain inaccessible due to geography, preservation challenges, or limited digitization efforts.

I wanted to explore whether software could become more than a catalogue of historical objects. Could it become an experience that evokes curiosity, presence, and wonder?

03

The Question

What if software could preserve experiences instead of simply preserving objects?

Could a web browser become a cinematic exhibition space where visitors feel as though they are encountering history rather than merely reading about it?

Could interactive graphics, lighting, motion, and storytelling create a more meaningful relationship between people and cultural heritage?

04

Why This Matters

Digital heritage is often framed as a digitization problem: scan the object, upload the image, write the caption. But that framing quietly limits what's possible. It treats software as a filing cabinet for history rather than a medium capable of expressing it.

Vestige starts from a different premise. If architecture, film, and physical exhibition design can each shape how people feel about the past, software should be able to as well. The choice isn't between accuracy and experience — it's whether the browser is allowed to be a stage rather than a shelf.

That distinction matters beyond this one project. It's the reason Vestige became the starting point for broader research into how interfaces can carry cultural meaning, not just information.

05

Research & Discovery

The project was informed by research across multiple disciplines rather than traditional web design alone.

06

Objectives

• Reimagine how historical artifacts are experienced online.
• Replace static galleries with immersive interaction.
• Build a browser-native museum experience without plugins.
• Create a reusable exhibition framework capable of supporting future collections.
• Combine engineering with narrative design.
• Demonstrate how software can preserve cultural memory through experience.

07

My Role

I was responsible for every aspect of the project. Responsibilities included:

• Product conception
• Research
• UX strategy
• Information architecture
• Interface design
• Motion design
• Three.js engineering
• Blender workflow
• Asset integration
• Lighting direction
• Frontend development
• Performance optimization
• Deployment

08

Process

The project evolved through multiple iterations.

Concept

The initial goal was not to build another online museum, but to create a digital exhibition that felt cinematic rather than informational.

Prototyping

Numerous interface layouts, presentation formats, and exhibit compositions were explored before arriving at the final immersive structure.

3D Pipeline

Artifacts were sourced, optimized, positioned, and integrated into a browser-based rendering pipeline using Blender and Three.js.

Experience Design

Considerable attention was given to transitions, pacing, lighting, and visual hierarchy to ensure that each artifact remained the focal point of the experience.

Refinement

Performance bottlenecks, rendering issues, lighting inconsistencies, and model integration challenges were progressively resolved through testing and iteration.

09

Engineering Decisions

10

Key Features

11

Challenges

12

Outcome

Vestige was successfully developed as a fully interactive browser-based digital heritage experience.

The project established a reusable foundation for future exhibitions and demonstrated the potential of web technologies to support immersive cultural storytelling.

Current Status

Future Roadmap

13

Gallery

Landing experience — designed as a threshold rather than a homepage, setting a cinematic tone before any artifact is seen.

Artifact presentation — each object is staged like a museum centerpiece, not a thumbnail in a grid.

Lighting composition — light is used deliberately to direct attention, the same way a spotlight would in a physical gallery.

Interactive exploration — orbit controls invite visitors to look closer rather than move on.

Transition sequence — camera choreography replaces page loads, preserving the feeling of continuous presence.

Mobile responsiveness — the exhibition adapts without losing its sense of scale or atmosphere.

14

Links

15

Reflection