Clue Icon over item?

My upcoming mod will feature a lot of exploration, and one of the things i’ll need is a point of interest indicator on the main screen (not the minimap though). The in-game bobbing question mark should do just fine.

Does anyone know how one can cause an item or even a stationary object to first show the indicator, and then trigger a window to display a message?

Have an npc that looks like the object you want and player can “talk to”, maybe.

I’ll hafta see if that’s a doable workaround. How to implement it?