FC St. Pauli is one of Germany’s most popular and distinctive football clubs, with a reputation in Germany’s professional football leagues that is second to none. Founded by 1910 e.V. and based in Hamburg, it’s widely recognized for its distinctive social culture , with a rich history and a major worldwide following. The club invites fans from across the globe to celebrate that history in its official, but fan-organized, non-profit museum — dedicated to telling FC St. Pauli’s story in innovative, engaging ways.
The museum’s ambition is to create a dynamic and immersive experience that grows from fan engagements and promotes topics such as diversity, sporting events against racism, and wider conversations around social impact. And, as part of this ambition, it is always aiming to expand the demographics it appeals to, with a focus on attracting younger audiences and making its exhibits inclusive for women and children.
To push this goal forward, FC St. Pauli Museum got in touch with Thoughtworks through our external social change network — which offers pro bono work to support community-based projects. Its team wanted to explore ways of bringing art into the city using Augmented Reality (AR) technology to change the way fans experience the club’s vibrant history.
An interactive and historical AR experience
Thoughtworks worked closely with FC St. Pauli Museum on a six-week project to design a new interactive fan experience as part of Tech Lab — a Thoughtworks initiative that takes innovative ideas and uses cutting-edge technology to bring them to life.
The process started with Discovery & Design. Together, we worked to identify and prioritize the product features required and then sorted by user experience across 2D and 3D to establish the development and engineering practices to deliver the AR application. The museum is currently conceptualizing an interactive “FCSP time travel” app for Android and iOS that showcases FC St. Pauli’s club history using AR technology.
The team built a virtual gallery that can be experienced through users’ mobile devices — complete with live scenes, interactive elements, and digitized artifacts that allow fans to immerse themselves in exhibits.
Our approach: Value-driven cycles of discovery and development
The team used techniques of prototyping and experimentation to create a solution that fit the museum’s needs in a short time frame.
Despite the distributed nature of the team, they overcame the challenge of testing the app in a real physical environment, using an extensive user testing library, to continuously validate the results of the application. The Thoughtworks team also used simulated testing and worked closely with the museum team to test the application within the physical space.
The solution: A new way to enhance user experience with the Club's history
The AR project is just one part of the museum’s wider ‘Multiverse’ initiative, which aims to improve end-user experiences and change how visitors interact with the club. The wider program will combine AR with 3D in-browser experiences, virtual reality exhibitions, and a vast media library filled with club history.
Visitors using the app will be able to touch photos to turn them into live scenes, hold their phones to mock stadiums to see player formations and biographies, and even interact with specific exhibits to dig deeper into their stories.
One of the other test projects for the technology, the exhibition “Kiezbeben”, will allow users to interact with digitized fanzines, eyewitness interviews, and more than 1,000 digitized objects covering the unique transformation of FC St. Pauli from a club of rather limited success to the cultural, social, and political icon of today. The app will be able to augment temporary exhibitions and other mediations as well.
Crucially, the app gives visitors the chance to decide which elements they’re interested in and shape a truly personalized visit, helping the museum broaden the demographics it appeals to.
Excellent result in a short time frame, inspiring outcome.
Moving forward, FC St. Pauli Museum plans to use the technology to keep the club’s history growing. It is currently working on integrating its Multiverse program with a live data feed for up-to-date game results, new image data, and fans’ social media posts — and encouraging fans to create their own content and share it within the community.
