Paradisini

From physical exhibition to virtual prototype

The CRAI Rare Book Library holds 2,803 printer marks from 1,900 printers, the result of 20 years of research documented in the "Marques d'impressors" database.

Paradisini was a physical exhibition that presented these marks in relation to the garden of the University of Barcelona's Historic Building as a metaphor: the garden as a cultivated space and the book as the cultivation of knowledge.

However, the physical exhibition faced major limitations: only 2,744 annual visits in Barcelona, difficult physical access, limited time, and mostly academic audience (78% specialized).

The challenge was to transform an experience bounded by space and time into a scalable digital one that would exponentially expand reach, open the collection to non-specialized audiences, and maintain academic depth without scaring off casual visitors with dense text.

From room tour to screen tour

In the physical exhibition, the visitor walked through showcases and panels in a concrete space for a limited time; in the digital version, the challenge was translating that tour to an interface that could be consulted from anywhere at any time, without losing the feeling of strolling through the garden.

The home acts as an entrance to the digital museum: it introduces Paradisini, situates the context of the Rare Book Library, and offers clear access to showcases and pieces, inspired by references like Gallica and collections sections of major museums.

Instead of reproducing physical panels as-is, the experience is organized into short, scannable modules: each showcase becomes a page with featured images, introductory text, and links leading the user to more detail or the "Marques d'impressors" database.

This format change allows moving from a continuous, dense discourse to layered navigation, where the user decides how deep to go, maintaining academic rigor but adapting it to digital reading rhythms.

The information architecture is designed for mixed audiences: researchers, students, and general public.

To achieve this, clear titles, guiding subtitles, contextual links, and a system of showcase pages are combined, acting as intermediate nodes between freer "garden" exploration and access to highly specialized resources.

Impact and usage behavior (last month)

In the last month, the digital museum recorded 72 real sessions (113 including bots) and 54 unique users.

65.28% of sessions come from new users (47 sessions) and 34.72% from returning users (25 sessions), indicating the project is still in discovery phase but already generating returns.

Most sessions come from Spain. Regarding devices, Chrome Desktop accounts for 73.61% of sessions (53), followed by Chrome Mobile with 16.67% (12).

The average of 1.71 pages per session and 50.79% scroll depth show exploration is still superficial: many users stay in the visible area.

However, the home page is clearly the most visited, followed by individual exhibitions like "Die drei Knaben", "Granota gripau nen", "Aracne", indicating interest in specific works when users reach them.

Based on this data, next iterations aim to increase navigation depth (links to "see more exhibitions" and related works), improve engagement with more visual content, and resolve missed click patterns detected in heatmaps.