At a glance: A team of four interaction designers (Nafisah Khan, Stacey Go, Laura Anderson, and Sayyid Hashimi) chose to create an interactive digital technology, which enabled visitors to contribute content to the earthquake zone within the Natural History Museum. Although the museum has digitized some of its collections and introduced educational interactive technology in certain areas, there is little opportunity within the earthquake zone for user generated content.
The team used a combination of observational and interview research methods to identify opportunities for content generation. This provided a rich understanding of visitor behaviors and their attitudes towards the museum. The team visited the Natural History Museum to conduct a field study. This involved observing visitors’ behaviors, specifically how visitors interacted with museum artifacts, in the context of their museum visit.
The team created two personas, based on the user research data, in order to inform design decisions and to ensure the target user was kept at the forefront throughout the design process. The two personas possessed varying needs, behavior and frustrations, with the key variable being their goals for visiting the museum. Both personas had experienced an earthquake prior to visiting the museum. To effectively communicate personas’ attributes to the team’s designer, a narrative format was used to describe personas.
The primary persona, Sophie, is focused on seeking fun and entertainment as part of her museum visit. This type of user enjoyed hands-on interaction with displays, and was less interested in reading the descriptions which accompany the displays. Throughout her time at the museum, she was active in sharing her experiences with others via social media. When sharing content, she tended to seek out locations in the museum which were eye-catching or have strong entertainment value. During the design phase, this persona was used to ensure the process of contributing content was fun, familiar and interactive for the user.
Design suggestions
Below are suggested user journeys and wireframes for a touchpoint prototype to be implemented in the natural history museum.
Future improvements
Upon completion of the evaluations, the team revisited their design and decided to create a second touchpoint as part of the user journey for watching earthquake survivor stories. During the user research stage, visitors were observed taking photos of a giant globe located at the top of the escalator leading to the entrance of the earthquake exhibit. The team decided the second touchpoint would be an interactive globe as this would tie in with the giant globe at the entrance of the earthquake exhibit.
The team also felt that adding an interactive globe would act as an interface metaphor, which aids the visitor’s interpretation of the system, by building on existing knowledge of other familiar domains. Visitor stories recorded using the story booth would be represented on the interactive globe with colorful dots. Users would be able to watch stories recorded by fellow museum visitors from various locations across the world.
