An interactive map for the knowledge-hungry
A one-of-its kind learning space…
Infrabel, the company managing and maintaining Belgium's railway infrastructure, launched a state-of-the-art railway training centre in 2021. Spanning over 8,800 square metres, this new facility boasts advanced equipment, practical simulation areas, and a wide range of theoretical classes.
The Infrabel Academy showcases capabilities and shares knowledge with partners, employees, and schools.
It’s a significant achievement - bringing with it a major challenge: how would Infrabel convey this breadth of activities and opportunities to such a diverse audience?
Imagine you needed to find your way across 8,800 square metres of learning experiences… Try a map that takes you on a virtual tour.
Interactive visual maps:
Navigating the maze of learning content
This unique solution provides an engaging and intuitive access point to content.
Maps have been considered one of the smartest inventions for millenia. Interactive maps are an ancient tool made fit for our digitised world, offering an added layer of insight and guidance. What are some of the things they can help you do?
- Enhance engagement: Visually appealing and interactive elements capture attention and maintain interest.
- Facilitate active learning: Users explore and interact with the map, becoming active participants in their learning process.
- Provide contextual understanding: Maps illustrate relationships between different parts, aiding in spatial and contextual comprehension.
- Offer personalised learning paths: Users navigate at their own pace, tailoring their experience to their needs.
- Support multimodal learning: Integrating text, images, audio, and video provides different entry points in the content and increases motivation to learn.
Mapping the Academy
To create a bespoke solution, we assessed how each key feature could be developed to make the most of the map for Infrabel’s unique needs.
We wanted to enable users to choose what to explore and how deep they are going to dive.
This resulted in a ‘less is more’ approach: users are presented with a taster of the many aspects of the Academy’s offering without overwhelming them.
The mapping process uses simplification to make the content accessible. At the same time, we needed to link the abstract representation with reality. Short video snippets helped us make the connection, showcasing the beautiful building and the impressive environment (including tracks running through the building!).
Guiding users
To quickly give a full picture of the key aspects of the Academy, the map also features a ‘guided tour’ option.
Playful elements capture visitors’ attention and prompt them to click and explore: can you spot the cow?
The map features Infrabel employees as well as their partners - in other words, the target audience. By representing users and their reality, we enable them to recognize their work and concrete daily challenges and easily find the content that’s most useful to them personally.
"Imagine you need to find your way in more than 8,500 sq m of learning experiences... Try a visual map."
John Smith
Our story with Infrabel
We have been collaborating with Infrabel for multiple years, developing an illustration system used externally on buildings, correspondence and for their communication. Internally, we leveraged it with their teams to solve problems with creative solutions such as this very project, e-learning modules on specific topics, serious games to facilitate the collaboration between departments,…
