Integrating Three Modalities into One Experience: A Case Study of 2024 DigiWave—DdDd

Abstract

Exhibition design today is moving towards multimodal experience and towards deepening the visitor's participation. Visitors meet physical interfaces in the built space, mobile interfaces on their own devices, and embodied experiences that come from how the body moves, attends and acts. Whether an exhibition succeeds depends less on any single modality than on how well the three are joined, so that the visitor follows one coherent journey instead of three parallel ones. This paper analyses 2024 DigiWave—DdDd, an exhibition on the cultural evolution of sound and digital media presented under Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs and recognised in Shopping Design’s Taiwan Design Best 100 awards, as a case in which three modalities were integrated by design. It examines how perforated melamine wall structures (physical interface), a mobile puzzle that ends in a personal digital instrument (mobile interface), and a final interactive sound installation in which visitors collectively shape music and projection (embodied experience) were designed to act as one experiential arc. From this case the paper derives four design principles: each modality should express the exhibition’s core metaphor in its own register; transitions between modalities should be staged as discoveries rather than procedural handoffs; the mobile interface should add agency rather than draw attention away from the physical space; and the closing experience should set the device aside and return the body to the centre. The paper closes with implications for designers working across these modalities in cultural and brand exhibitions.

Keywords: Exhibition design, Multimodal experience, Mobile interface, Embodied experience, Visitor participation

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008079