The stories from World War II up close

In multiple online co-creation sessions, our strategists, developers, and designers collaborated with the knowledge scientists from the WO2Net Foundation and data scientists from Spinque on the development of the platform. By working together across different disciplines, we were able to transform complex data into actionable information and deliver an optimal user experience.

The platform is almost entirely data-driven and automatically grows alongside new datasets and collections. Thanks to reusable components, the system remains well-organised, no matter how large the data sources become. During further development, we migrated from Drupal to the modern Sanity CMS, making management simpler than ever. With an intelligent import tool, all existing stories were automatically included.

Through Linked Open Data, advanced search strategies and an extensive Knowledge Graph, semantic connections are created between the sources. For example, we can precisely determine where a person was during a particular event and what their role was. The redesigned search function makes these connections even more visible: users can now filter more easily by theme, source, or location to find relevant information faster. Searching by place of birth or death is also now possible. In addition, the search experience aligns with the NDE guidelines, including behavioural profiles for targeted information searching, browsing and discovery. These profiles form an important foundation within the heritage sector and contribute to an accessible and intuitive way of searching.