Decoded: 75 Years of the Australian Signals Directorate

For its 75th anniversary, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) lifted the veil on its achievements. It allowed the public inside their work for the first time. Through a temporary exhibition at the National Museum of Australia, Decoded: 75 Years of the Australian Signals Directorate, the ASD aimed to grow public trust and understanding of their continued work to protect the country from intelligence threats.

Key challenge: How do you build public trust for a secret organization?

Due to rising cyber threats, ASD no longer works only with the intelligence community but also with everyday citizens. This temporary exhibition needed to go beyond revealing facts and figures to create understanding by helping people make the connection between signals intelligence and their daily lives.

Approach: Transform people into agents. By placing visitors in operatives' shoes, we aimed to make emotional and cognitive connections to change perceptions.

The concept of intercepting signals guides the experience. Throughout the exhibition, visitors are hands-on participants in decoding specially declassified stories with authentic real-life ASD agents at the center narrating the story. Five multimedia-rich pillars create a pentagon-shaped axis (a nod to Five Eyes) featuring videos with real operatives, centered by an impressive, ceiling-height digital cipher wheel with a waterfall of codewords trickling down.

We designed the compact space to feel intimate and intense. The dynamic visual language using real ASD codewords, monochromatic color palette, and sparse lighting draw attention to information as visitors interact with the exhibits. Visitors "unlock" content and artifacts throughout the experience by stepping onto floor symbols that activate audio narratives and videos. Triggered sensors reveal artifacts hidden behind transparent two-way mirrors.

Visitors' mobile phones provided an optional deep-dive narrative layer throughout the exhibition. By scanning or typing codewords into a web app, visitors discover more stories of objects on display and themes covered. A new multi-player game is imaginative but realistic, immersing visitors into the secret world of the directorate, tackling adventures based on real cyber security incidents. Like working inside the agency, people must play as a team to win.