Located in Colorado Springs, the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum was built to celebrate American excellence through an immersive, 60,000-square-foot space dedicated to the stories of Olympic and Paralympic athletes. Designed to be one of the most accessible museums in the world, no two visitors would ever share the same experience.
From its striking architecture to its high-tech, adaptive exhibits, the museum sought to create an experience worthy of the Olympic spirit. One where inspiration, inclusivity, and innovation converge. They envisioned a museum where visitors could plan their journey online, selecting favorite athletes, sports, and accessibility preferences before arrival. Once inside, each visitor would be greeted by a museum that recognized them, and where every screen, story, and interactive moment could adapt to their interests, creating a personal connection to the Olympic spirit. Crowd Favorite was selected through a competitive RFP process to architect this digital ecosystem from the ground up, bridging the physical and digital worlds to deliver an experience as dynamic and inspiring as the athletes it honors.
The Challenge
When the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum was first conceived, every element, from the architecture to the visitor experience, was being created for the very first time. There was no existing system to rebuild or platform to modernize. This was a greenfield opportunity to design and implement the museum’s entire digital foundation in tandem with its physical construction.
The challenge was both technical and creative:
- Connect pre-visit planning, on-site interactivity, and post-visit engagement into a unified experience.
- Integrate 10+ vendor systems, from ticketing and RFID tracking to accessibility and exhibit databases.
- Build a scalable architecture capable of evolving with future initiatives, including a first-of-its-kind Athletes Database to honor every U.S. Olympian and Paralympian.
- Ensure world-class accessibility so that every visitor, regardless of ability, could fully participate in the experience.
Our Approach
From the beginning, our focus was on collaboration and orchestration. Crowd Favorite joined more than two dozen stakeholders and vendors, leading on-site strategy sessions to align creative ambition with technical feasibility. We began by immersing ourselves in the museum’s mission and operational blueprint, guided through prototypes and mockups by Olympic silver medalist Michelle Dusserre herself. These early experiences informed our approach: every technical decision needed to amplify the emotional impact of the museum’s storytelling.
How we worked together:
- Strategic leadership: Coordinated across 25 participants and 10+ vendors, ensuring systems for ticketing, exhibits, point-of-sale, and digital storytelling worked in harmony.
- Unified experience design: Developed the framework that connected pre-visit registration, personalized exhibit interaction, and post-visit engagement through API-driven architecture.
- Accessibility by design: Created a visitor preference model allowing users to preselect settings such as font size, captions, and audio assistance, that was applied dynamically across every exhibit.
- Collaborative partnership: Built trust with leadership through transparency and expertise; Our CEO, Karim Marucchi’s architectural background proved invaluable in connecting digital strategy to the museum’s physical design vision.
Through these workshops, Crowd Favorite became the central integrator and responsible for aligning creativity, technology, and user experience across every touchpoint.
The Solution
The resulting system transformed how visitors experience museums. Guests could plan their visit online, creating a personalized profile with preferences for accessibility, interests, and favorite sports. Upon arrival, RFID-enabled tickets synced with these profiles, triggering adaptive displays and content as visitors moved through the museum’s spiral galleries.
Each exhibit would respond to the visitor’s preferences in real time, adjusting font sizes, captions, and media playback based on accessibility settings. Interactive activities, like racing against Olympic legends or completing on-screen challenges, were recorded and stored in a personalized digital locker.
After the visit, guests would receive a link to their own online hub containing highlights, photos, and performance data. This met the goal of extending the museum’s connection beyond its walls.
When the museum prepared to open during COVID-19, Crowd Favorite anticipated the need for a safer, more scalable onboarding process. We converted the in-person registration kiosks into a mobile-friendly system, allowing visitors to complete their setup from their own devices.
Behind the scenes, this entire experience was supported by an integrated architecture connecting 14+ vendor systems, built to evolve as the museum’s needs and technologies grow.
This was more than a website, it was the digital soul of a new national institution.
This Museum has been nearly 10 years in the making … The Museum is more than a sports museum. It is a museum of hopes and dreams. And we think the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum will provide athletes and fans alike with a space to celebrate friendship, determination and all the best values Team USA athletes embody.”
— Christopher Liedel, CEO, at opening
Key Results
Mobile onboarding system
reduced registration time and simplified first-day guest experience
Interactive exhibits
delivered measurable engagement through real-time data capture and visitor interaction tracking
Unified 14+ vendor systems
into a single integrated architecture
30+ interactive experiences
designed around a personalized accessibility model, ensuring every visitor is engaged on their own terms.
Scalable foundation
for future initiatives, including an Athletes Database honoring all U.S. Olympians and Paralympians
Why Crowd Favorite
Since 2007, Crowd Favorite has been a strategic partner for enterprises seeking to bridge complexity with clarity. Our role as digital architects means we don’t just build; we align technology, storytelling, and business vision into cohesive ecosystems that endure.
Our early delivery, cross-vendor collaboration, and ability to integrate human-centered design within enterprise-scale systems earned the museum’s trust, and exemplified the long-term relationships we’re known for. Our client partnerships last four times longer than the industry average, because we approach every engagement as an extension of the client’s own team.
From digital strategy to open-source innovation, our work on this project reflects what defines Crowd Favorite: adaptability, transparency, and a relentless pursuit of better.
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