Bringing Stories to Life

My Journey as a Digital Product Manager for the Migration Museum

Last week marked the launch of a project that I’ve had the privilege of working on for the past year as a digital product manager. The Migration Museum, home to more than 7,000 oral stories collected over the last decade, wanted to transform how these powerful narratives are accessed and shared. These stories, recorded on paper discs, were transcribed by a team of dedicated volunteers using Excel. My role was to modernize this process and build a more interactive and accessible experience for both the museum team and its visitors.

The first step was migrating the stories from Excel into a MySQL database managed through a bespoke CMS. This shift streamlined the transcription process, improving how the team manages the vast amount of data they’ve curated over the years.

A unique part of the project was integrating machine learning using the OpenAI API. I implemented a system to extract implicit keywords from each story, such as feelings and moods. This allowed us to create connections between stories based on emotional resonance, rather than just the written content. By focusing on shared emotional undertones, we were able to group stories in a more meaningful and intuitive way, adding a new dimension to the storytelling experience.

But the real challenge was to design a way for museum visitors to engage directly with these stories. Together, we envisioned an interactive kiosk where visitors could search, explore, vote for their favorite stories, and even contribute their own. The software is built on HTML, PHP, and MySQL, creating a seamless experience for the museum’s new exhibition, All Our Stories.

Accessibility was a central focus in the design. By integrating QR codes, visitors can connect the kiosk with their personal mobile devices, allowing them to use their own accessibility settings—whether that’s screen readers, contrast adjustments, font size, or even translation apps like Google Translate. This bring-your-own-device (BYOD) approach ensures everyone, regardless of their needs, can engage with the exhibition in a way that’s comfortable and familiar.

The All Our Stories exhibition invites visitors to explore the reasons behind migration, the experience of arriving and settling, and the complexities of identity and belonging. It highlights how migration has shaped our world and opens a space for reflection and conversation as the museum moves towards its permanent home in central London.

I’m proud to have played a part in bringing these stories to life in a way that’s not only interactive and accessible but also designed to spark new stories and ideas for future generations.