Project partners: Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation & Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum

Design Challenge: Design an online presence for the digital collections of the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald Memorials that is accessible to all visitors (especially young people) and combines the historical sites and exhibitions with a virtual learning experience.

For most of us, visiting a former concentration camp is a compulsory part of our history lessons during school. Many students associate this expedition with uncertainty about how to prepare appropriately for a visit, how to behave at these places of remembrance, and how to reflect on their experiences afterward. The Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials and the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum have launched an innovative educational project to address these issues.

In the winter semester of 2021/22, one of our student Design Thinking teams was tasked with the design challenge to develop an online presence for the digital collections of the memorial sites. This online presence was supposed to create an experiential connection between the historical sites, the exhibitions, and a virtual experience, especially for young visitors.

The student team started the design thinking process with in-depth research on digital collections and exhibitions. In particular, it analyzed features of virtual exhibitions that would complement or replace on-site visits. Part of this analysis was also an immersion in the collections with a visit to the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen memorials.

As another central part of the "Understanding" phase, the team interviewed various relevant target groups, including memorial guides, teachers, and students.

The students had a special conversation with the author, translator, journalist, and Shoah survivor Ivan Ivanji. When asked what he thought young people should feel during and after a visit to the memorial sites, he surprised the team with a very concise statement: Above all, young visitors should be curious. This made it clear to the team that their concept should encourage the young people's spirit of discovery so that they do not just concentrate on schoolwork during their stay at the memorial sites.

The Design Thinking team sorted and clustered the most succinct statements from the interviews, observations, and immersion experiences and launched into idea development with clear goals for their solution. The solution was to be interest-based, encourage curiosity, link objects to biographies of real people, and use gamification elements.

Based on the findings, the team developed various ideas and prototypes for which they received valuable feedback in test sessions with students. The final concept presented, "Erinnerungsspuren" (traces of memory), is an app tailored to the needs of students that provides low-threshold access to the history of the Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps. With the app, students can prepare for a visit to the memorial and explore objects from the memorial's collections through playful research.

The app picks up students at their level of knowledge and based on their personal interests. The team decided to tell biographical stories in the app using digitized objects. When testing the prototype, it became clear that this approach best suited the students' interests.

Starting from digital objects, students can go on an interactive learning journey and playfully explore the historical path of individual persons. This mode of interaction not only helps them prepare but also structures the visit to the memorial sites.

After a round of use, users can discuss and compare their learning experiences and collect digital objects and associated biographies in a personal digital object library. These objects can trigger new stories and invite further exploration.

The concept developed by the students, including a prototype for the user journey, was handed over to the project partners for further development at the end of the Design Thinking process. It was a valuable starting point for the next steps in the app's development and realization by the memorial sites' project teams and the design office Zum Kuckuck.

Since February 2023, the result has been online in the form of the web app "Dingen auf der Spur. " “With “Dingen auf der Spur”, a new way of approaching the history of the concentration camps digitally has emerged. The collaboration with the HPI School of Design Thinking has provided valuable impulses for this”, Markus Wegewitz, Stiftung Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, summarizes the project collaboration.