heyWowza, the Talking Point greeting visitors at Technopolis
heyWowza is the Talking Point at the entrance of Technopolis in Mechelen: press the button, ask anything out loud, and Wowza answers on the spot. For its first nine days, we read every single conversation.
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Technopolis put a Talking Point at the door
A kiosk, a button, and a character with a backstory written by Technopolis itself.
From 14 to 22 February 2026, heyWowza stood at the entrance of Technopolis, the science centre in Mechelen. Visitors pressed the button and asked whatever they liked: how an exhibit works, where the toilets are, what to do with a 4 year old. Wowza answered out loud, in Dutch, French or English, about 557 times a day.
Then we did the part most vendors skip: we read every single conversation, all 5,012 of them. Technopolis invented Wowza’s whole personality, a visitor decided it looks like a donut, and the data below tells the rest of the story.
Live at Technopolis. The booth at the entrance, the panel inviting visitors to test Wowza, the audience it drew (faces blurred), and the creators Dries and Dennis on the floor.
What did 5,012 visitors actually ask?
The biggest category, by a distance, was visitors trying to understand the exhibits.
Each visitor asked about 3.5 questions, and 97% spoke them out loud rather than typing (4,862 talked, only 150 typed). Exhibit questions came first: how Maxwell’s Wheel works, how clouds form, what the plasma ball does. Wayfinding came second, and a solid 13% of visitors interviewed Wowza about itself: “Are you a robot?”, “How old are you?” and, memorably, “Why do you look like a donut?” Pick a dataset and watch the bars.
Share of 5,012 conversations by category
Languages picked at the kiosk
Answers served from memory, day by day
Yes, kids saying “67” is a real category. The memory bars show how each day heyWOWza learns more and serves answers from memory rather than processing them fully.
This is what a Talking Point does
First Wowza at the museum, then the demo that shows the whole system.
Wowza on the museum floor, in short form.
What a Talking Point does
Our Talking Point product demo, not Technopolis footage. Wowza runs on exactly this system, with its own face, voice and backstory. More on the Talking Point page.
The same system with another face: AI Loes greets visitors at the Zwin Natuur Park reception, with the real Loes standing beside her.
How long an answer takes, and why
A fresh answer takes a few seconds, and most of that is not the AI thinking.
Our technology works quickly when people ask a question. This is necessary because for this to feel like a conversation, we need to answer as quickly as possible.
Seconds per step in a fresh answer, February 2026. The lookup is the bottleneck, and the next thing we optimise.
What changed in the summer 2026 update
Wowza did not stop learning in February: twenty changes shipped this summer, and these are the six you would notice.
- Live captions, word by word. The screen writes along while Wowza speaks, and the caption text now sizes itself to fit.
- A faster AI model on European servers. With a backup provider on standby, so a hiccup upstream never silences the kiosk.
- Weekly e-mail reports for staff. What visitors asked and in which language, delivered to the team without anyone exporting a thing.
- Smarter video matching. Wowza picks the right explainer video more often, and suggests questions other visitors asked about it.
- Public web chat. Wowza now also answers from any device, no kiosk required.
Technopolis invites visitors to test Wowza, leave feedback and help it take shape.
5,012 conversations, 10 errors
Reliability is the least shareable stat and the first one a venue should ask about.
People treat a good AI like a person
Visitors said hello, asked Wowza how old it is, and wanted to know why it looks like a donut. Nobody does that to a search box. Give the kiosk a character worth talking to and visitors will talk.
It learns from every conversation
The more Wowza is asked, the more answers it serves from memory: six times cheaper, three times faster, same quality. A Talking Point is a colleague whose first week is its worst.
Every conversation feeds the same brain.
What science centres ask us first
Does Wowza invent answers?
No. It answers from Technopolis’s own material, and when a question falls outside it, it says so instead of guessing.
Which languages does it speak?
Dutch, French and English at Technopolis. Dutch took 83.5% of the conversations, but the language mix follows your visitors, not the other way around.
What happens with the conversations?
They are read and categorised, and the team gets a weekly e-mail report of what visitors asked. That is how every number on this page exists.
Can it run without the kiosk?
Since August 2026, yes. Wowza also answers in a public web chat from any device, so the same colleague works on your website too. See what a Talking Point includes.
What does it cost?
The honest answer: it depends on your visitor numbers, and the memory effect means it gets cheaper the longer it runs. Put your numbers into our ROI calculator for an estimate.
The same idea at other venues
The same idea in an art museum, a nature park and a Roman site.
Want your front desk to talk back?
Tell us where you would put a Talking Point. We will tell you honestly what it could answer on day one.
