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A Day at the Museum

For this project, my team was tasked with creating an interactive museum experience to showcase a technological era of our choice. Inspired by retro technology of the 90s and 2000s, we chose to theme our museum after Y2K technology using 4 touchpoints. These included: small-scale (phone screen), medium scale (tablet), large-scale (TV or monitor), and physical touchpoints. We wished to make a memorable and engaging experience for 15-21 year old guests to understand this specific era of technology history. I personally contributed to this project during the research, cultural probe, touchpoint ideation, sketching, testing, Music Game touchpoint, and work on the documentation.

See Documentation for the full design process and rationale.

Design Process

Our final deliverables were defined in our project brief and included a working html and css touchpoint, 3 high fidelity interactive figma prototypes of the other touchpoints to be implemented in the museum, and complete documentation of our research and processes. 

Desk Research

Goals

  • Understand the era of technology better

  • Discover what makes museums engaging and memorable

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We researched a series of questions to grasp a complete understanding of the era of technology as well as museum experiences in general. These questions were:​​

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  1. What significant or societally impactful technologies were released between 1995 and 2005?

  2. What were the target audiences for each of these technologies?

  3. Which technologies were the most popular during this era, even if they weren’t released between 1995-2005?

  4. What kinds of interactions help visitors interact with museum exhibits?

  5. What motivates people to want to interact with an exhibit?

Cultural Probe

Goal

  •  Gain insight into the technological usage patterns and habits of our age group around the years 1995-2005

Process

  • To make the experience the most accurate for our guests, we conducted the probe on 34-50 year old individuals, who had first hand experience with the technologies of 1995-2005.

  • ​We used 3 different categories: Communication, Social Media, and Music​, to assess the most memorable aspects of each technology from that era

  • Participants answered questions about a series of images of technologies from the 2000s and reflected on their experiences in using them​​

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This process highlighted the differences between technologies of today and of Y2K, enabling us to narrow down our ideas for our touchpoints and understand what guests would wish to see in the exhibit. ​​​

Concept Testing

Goals

  • Consult with our target audience to narrow down ideas based on their engagement level

  • Understand what the potential guest would be most intrigued by in the exhibit

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Based on our concept testing, we settled on the following touchpoints:

  1. Blog Post: Visitors write a blog post on their phone (small screen)

  2. View Blogs: Blog post will pop up on a large TV (large screen)

  3. Speed Search: Participants race to find information (physical)

  4. Music Game: Walkthrough of the process of downloading music (medium screen)

Sketching/Design

Based on our testing and research, we sketched our ideas for the 4 touchpoints and discussed the elements that we wished to see in each of them. Viewing all of our sketches and taking inspiration from each other, we outlined what we would like to see in the final versions of each interaction. We then divided the work of the 4 touchpoints among the 5 group members (2 group members for Touchpoint 2 (the coded touchpoint). This way, we could each be fully involved equally in the project. We then looked over each other's touchpoints and provided feedback for final edits.

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Final Prototype

Our final design was the 4 touchpoints (one coded) and three high-fidelity interactive figma prototypes. My team split up to create these, so I fully created the Music Game touchpoint myself (as shown below). A full document of all of the figma iterations of our touchpoints is available to view below as well. 

Full figma file available here.

During this project I got to experiment with figma variants and interactivity, allowing me to enhance my visual design skills and learn the figma platform more. I was also very involved with the research and developmental stages of this process, championing the desk research, cultural probe, concept testing, and sketching before the final prototyping stage. This project taught me a lot, and I was very pleased with the end result for this being my second learning studio class!

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