The Real Mary King’s Close - Souvenir photo retail system

As one of Edinburgh’s top 5 star historical attractions, The Real Mary King’s Close appointed Continuum Group to produce a bespoke photographic retail system, which would allow visitors to purchase a souvenir photo of themselves during their visit to the Close, taken in almost complete darkness.

Simon was assigned to design and build the entire system, and also to manage the project. This involved research and development into appropriate hardware, including infra-red technology, design and programming of software and user interfaces, liaising with the client, on-site installation and providing staff training and technical support.

The result is a unique revenue-generating photographic system, which the client now operates with a minimum of effort, and requiring almost no technical knowledge.

Water’s Edge Visitor Centre - Wild Watch Archive interactive

The Water’s Edge Country Park opened a visitor centre in 2006, offering visitors to this wildlife haven an enhanced experience. Contributing to the design and build of the new centre, Simon led the development of the Wild Watch Archive, a database-driven interactive which allows visitors to search a collection of photos and videos, taken by the park’s wildlife surveillance cameras. The interactive also provides video interviews with three experts, filmed at selected locations around the park.

Simon led all aspects of the project, including client liaison, scripting the expert interviews, leading a two day photo and video shoot, and assisting with photography. He also designed and programmed the interactive, the database and content management system which allows the client to fully manage the database content, and then installed the system on-site to run on two networked kiosks which access the database, photos and videos from a server.