Building the Prototype

The earliest steps in building the Saganauts prototype grew out of equal parts creativity and reflection — almost like an ongoing conversation between the two worlds I’ve worked in for years: museums and digital storytelling.

Museums hold a significant responsibility. They are not only places for visitors to explore, but institutions tasked with preserving, documenting and conveying cultural and scientific heritage. Every object, artwork and label must be precise. Yet children rarely connect with culture through precision alone — they connect through wonder, emotion and the sense of seeing themselves in a story.

So my challenge was this:

How do you build a digital tool that honours a museum’s commitment to factual accuracy while still speaking directly to a child’s imagination?

My starting point was to shape the concept as a story engine — a prototype able to draw on museum data and transform it into personalised narratives. Each story would adjust to a child’s age, name and reading level, ensuring accessibility and emotional resonance. The foundation had to rest on solid knowledge, but the experience needed to feel alive — not like browsing a dataset, but like stepping into a world with its own pulse.

As the prototype grew, I realised that this balance — the meeting point between knowledge and wonder — was the true centre of Saganauts. The museum provides the facts; the AI weaves them into narrative form; and the child adds the spark that makes it meaningful.

Even the early, modest version proved the potential. A handful of objects, a few stories, and a clear vision of what could happen when culture and technology learn to collaborate.

The tool also showed another important strength: it can evolve. Stories can be updated to follow temporary exhibitions, highlight newly arrived objects, or shift focus to architecture and sculptures outside the building — a way to keep storytelling alive even during exhibition changes or periods where the museum is physically closed. Knowledge is still shared, still experienced, still carried forward.

Now the project is entering its next phase: expanding the tool together with museums, educators and authors; testing how it supports children’s learning; and integrating fixed stories written by children’s book writers alongside the AI-generated ones.

My hope is that Saganauts will grow into a space where museums and imagination meet halfway — a tool that lets culture speak to the next generation in a way that is both accurate and alive, no matter when or where they encounter it.