experience design

2BCF: Week 5

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We continued to develop our Space Squad experience and also started to prototype out a projection mapping experience for the classroom. Both would be traveling activations that we could use to teach STEAM concepts.

For our Space Squad experience we wrote up an experience design doc. Turns out what I learned in my Experience Design class was super helpful! For that class, we created an experience design doc for every project that we worked on. This allowed the whole team to be on the same page about the experience. I used the same documentation from class for designing this experience.

I also learned about the MDA approach to game design from my co-intern Aubrey. Aubrey is currently enrolled in the Game and Interactive Media Design Masters program at USC. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics. The theory states that designers start designing at the aesthetic stage, but players approach games from the mechanics stage.

Diagram from “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.”

Diagram from “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research.”

Using this approach, we began to think about the aesthetics of our experience. We both agreed that we liked the sassy AI character in the Space Squad experience and wanted to apply that to our experience. We began writing the script and walking through the user flow.

For our projection mapping experience, I showed my team how to use HeavyM, a projection mapping software tool that we used in our Experience Design class at the ETC. I prototyped a simple set-up out of printer paper and tape, and used the projector in the classroom.

We started to discuss how we could teach students about color theory, creating mood, and setting a tone for your experience. As well as explaining how light works, diffraction, and why certain parts of your projection mapping will never look crisp.

I envisioned a curriculum in which students get to play around with the projection mapping software while listening to different types of music. Students could design experiences around their favorite songs.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I taught a class about Experience Design to the middle school students. The purpose was to gather data for my pitch project in the fall. Our pitch team wanted to know what middle school students thought were cool when it comes to museum experiences.

The goal was to conduct an informal active survey study to determine middle school students’ perception of museums/museum-like spaces or experiences, and what are middle school students’ interests/what do they find to be “cool” or engaging.

Most students did not think that museums were “cool” and assumed that museums were boring institutional settings. Students typically went to museums with their school. When shown examples of interactive museum experiences like The Museum of Ice Cream, students were excited about those types of experiences. Some students were also not sure if they had ever been to a museum or had never been to a museum.

Students were very much engaged in creating their own experiences and appreciated having the freedom to create what they wanted. They created a wide variety of experiences many referencing pop culture:

  • Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

  • Stranger Things

  • Marvel’s Avengers

  • Friday Night at Freddy’s

  • XXXTentacion

There were many game-themed experiences, and for the most part, boys thought that a video game themed or superhero exhibit would be cool. Boys also gravitated towards creating more scary or violent stations (i.e. a punching station to release negative energy). Girls typically created more self-expression related experiences such as a graffiti wall and selfie stations with props.

The students were very tapped into pop culture and sensitive to what is considered “cool” and age-appropriate. Older students took a longer time to sketch their prototypes and were more hesitant to attach themselves to an idea. What they choose to tell other people that they like is very important to them, because it defines their identity in the eyes of their peers. All of these students express themselves in different ways, but being heard is a constant theme.

See photos of all their amazing creations below! FYI he meant to spell I.S.S. (International Space Station).

Baby’s First Experience Design Project

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Up until December 2018, I had never even heard of Experience Design as a field. Since I’ve stepped into it, I’ve realized that it is a perfect synthesis of my skill sets: envisioning and executing the bigger picture, and making slide decks. A LOT of slide decks.

This semester I got the chance to be the Lead Experience Designer for a collaboration with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Our team designed an interactive experience for children to practice kindness. The final prototype was a mixed reality experience in which children control a physical umbrella prop, mapped to a digital umbrella in a virtual world. Children work together or independently to shelter characters from the rain and bring them back to their homes.

This project gave me the opportunity to flex my design skills. But this wouldn’t have been possible without an amazing team to provide me with the bandwidth to try something new. I was incredibly lucky to have amazing artists that created characters that invoked empathy, a programmer who provided valuable design feedback, and a fearless producer who was able to emotionally and physically guide us through our first project course at the ETC. Their trust in me helped me to become a more confident designer, and I can’t thank them enough.

I learned so much from this experience:

  • Kids are way smarter than you think

  • The difference between designing for an experience vs. a game

  • Telling stories and building interest curves without definite entry and exit points

  • Balancing diverse client needs with faculty needs

  • Converting a human emotional experience into a digital experience

  • How to make a killer slide deck

You can find all the gruesome details on our blog.

SXSW Day 2: Domes, Waiting Rooms, Play, Oh My!

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Being a true Bostonian, and a long-time fan of the Museum of Science (MoS), of course I had to attend all of the sessions hosted by the MoS at SXSW.

I grew up going to field trips at the MoS and even attending a sleepover in the bird wing. As a adult I attended planetarium shows hosted by my friend and co-worker, Ari Daniel, and scoured the job listings for employment opportunities. But alas, I only made it to final interviews (one day hopefully!).

The first session that I attended, “Do it in a Dome! The Planetarium as an Arts Medium,” featured Monica Bolles from Resonant Interactions, Ben Gondrez from the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery, and Danielle LeBlanc and James Wetzel from the MoS. I learned about the world of the fulldome, which I didn’t even know existed. Prior to this panel, I was very familiar with planetariums, but had no idea how much work was being done to explore the medium.

I was blown away by J-Walt’s Lucid Dreamscapes and the work being done in fulldome gaming. I was also impressed by how the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery organized a makerspace/meetup in their planetarium as an educational opportunity to create content. I also loved the idea of the Dome Artist in Residence program, as a way to explore planetariums as a medium for art.

J-Walt’s Lucid Dreamscapes. Image courtesy of J-Walt.

J-Walt’s Lucid Dreamscapes. Image courtesy of J-Walt.

In particular, I loved how the MoS is using the planetarium as a new venue for musicians and shows in Boston. Back in Boston, I was always looking for fun events to attend in my free time. Having attended Ari Daniel’s Stories Under the Stars for two years running, I can say that I am a huge fan of the planetarium as a storytelling medium. (Also, a huge fan of Ari Daniel as a storyteller.)

Although this panel did give me huge FOMO (fear of missing out). Wetzel talked about the drag shows that he’s been organizing at the planetarium, and his future plans for a music festival this summer. Never have I wished I was back in Boston so badly.

But this wasn’t the only MoS session that I attended. In the afternoon, I attended James Wetzel and Lisa Monrose’s “Waiting Rooms: A Building-Sized Installation.” Which again, made me have huge FOMO. I can’t believe I missed this event back in Boston, and really hope that they do it again.

Session image courtesy of SXSW.

Session image courtesy of SXSW.

With architect Nathalie Pozzi and game designer Eric Zimmerman, they organized an experiential participatory experience that took place across the entire museum. Guests were thrown into the experience with no explanation. As soon as they arrived, they were split from their group and commanded to follow the blue lines. Guests had to figure out the unspoken rules enforced by guards, and their roles in the experience. In order to enter rooms or leave them, they had to pay an arbitrary amount of currency in the form of tickets, pennies, and candy, that were earned in a specific way in each room.

Each room was like a puzzle. In one room, guests could accumulate currency just by sitting in a chair. In another, they had to line up by height, only the shortest people in the room could leave. My favorite described was the bingo room, in which guests had to win bingo to leave. However, the boards were tiny, the pieces were made of confetti, the guards walked around quickly causing the confetti to blow off, and the announcer either announced numbers very quickly or very slowly. All of these puzzles were designed to tap into the guests’ frustrations.

At the end of the night, the experience abruptly ended, and guests were guided into the planetarium for a town hall with the creators and a psychologist. Guests could share their frustrations and joys. The experience was designed as a metaphor to explore “bureaucracy, immigration, economic inequality, and the systemization of contemporary life.”

This experience was powerful in using simple, mundane tasks to manipulate the emotional arc of guests. While I was really impressed by the gamification of these tough topics, I was really more impressed by the commitment of the adult programming producers to shift guests’ perspectives of the MoS as a venue for entertainment. They discussed afterwards how important these types of events are in attracting new audiences to the museum, and exploring how to get people to become members of the MoS for entirely different reasons than the normal programming.

I really appreciate how these events can bring new audiences into the fold. While this particular event is not directly STEM related, these topics are still relevant in the scientific field especially when it comes to the bureaucracy of research.

Aside from attending MoS talks on the second day of SXSW, I also attended a talk by Ryan Swanson, the founder of The Urban Conga. Swanson and his team build interactive installations for open-ended play to break down barriers in cities. Their motto is to activate the inactive; reinvigorating dead spaces in cities.

The Hangout, an installation by The Urban Conga. Image courtesy of The Urban Conga.

The Hangout, an installation by The Urban Conga. Image courtesy of The Urban Conga.

They started off guerilla style, installing swings in underpasses, driving across cities with their station wagon covered in graffiti, and rolling around 12ft beach balls in dangerous neighborhoods. Now they install Xbox Kinect murals, ping pong tables, and Marimba benches into cities (with their permission). They’ve also explored using conductive paint and theremin-like structures for sound installations. All of this with the goal of getting people to play together.

In this talk, I loved the central idea of play as a way to break down barriers. Play is something that we forget about as we grow up. As children, we’re told to play nicely with others and encouraged to play. But somewhere along the line, we stop playing. Or at least I stopped playing. This talk made me really think about how I can introduce play back into my life.

In the process of focusing on my career, working hard at my first job, applying to grad school, and being in grad school, I’ve forgotten to leave room for play. But play is so central to the work that I do. How can I hope to build experiences that transform, awe, and inspire, if I don’t personally ground my being into play? I hope that returning from this conference, I’ll think about creating more opportunities and space in my life to play.