Creating an interactive and inclusive representation of the Portuguese language through a series of installations

Initially hired to design one experience, my relationship with the Museum of Portuguese Language pushed me to form a small team. I was the sole designer, collaborating with two developers and a digital producer.

Client: Fundação Roberto Marinho

My roles: Interaction Designer, Project Manager

The challenge

In 2015, a major fire broke out in Sao Paulo's iconic Museum of Portuguese Language. Following the tragic incident, the Roberto Marinho Foundation was assigned to rebuild the museum. They contacted me in 2018 to help redesign an installation called Crosswords.

Crosswords aimed to give visitors an experience of how other languages influenced Brazilian Portuguese. The successful delivery of the design for Crosswords sparked a relationship that inspired the client to trust me with developing four additional experiences.

I formed a small business under the name of feelScience, which addressed the client's needs and educated me about the challenges of running a remote team pre-pandemic. Beyond my design activities, I had to hire and manage developers, and a digital producer, that supported feelScience's relationship with the client. It was also the first I worked with museum curators and anthropologists as stakeholders.

The outcome

The Museum of Portuguese Language reopened in August 2021 and received more the 260k visitors in its first year since reopening. The expectation is that four million visitors in visit the musuem over the next decade.