Rainforest Story! - an Augmented Museum Experience
Graduate Project / Stanford, CA / Winter 2011
Museum visits are engaging, but can also be full of missed educational opportunities when visitors don't read information cards or make the connections exhibit designers intend for them to make. Mobile applications that utilize augmented reality technology offer great opportunities for "just-in-time" learning that is situated in the context of the exhibit space.
We designed Rainforest Story for the California Academemy of Sciences' Rainforest Exhibit to create a prototype of an augmented learning experience on the iPhone that allows visitors to physically interact with the rainforest environment and to take on the role of an active scientist. Although the exhibit is experiential and beautiful, due to the common constraint to keep living organisms in separate display cases, the larger narrative of biodiversity is sometimes lost and incomplete in the visitors' experience. We saw the need for a mobile app as a way to tell this story of biodiverty, help conceptually orient visitors, and enrich the museum experience. (Created in collaboration with Jamie Diy & Angela Pan Wong).
Video demo of prototype:
design process
My role in the project involved designing the user experience, conducting multiple iterations of user testing, and implementing the user interface. Our project started with a strong role-play game mechanic in which users take on various roles to "save" the rainforest, however, through user research we learned that this approach to design actually distracted visitors from enjoying the exhibit itself. We learned that we had to balance the game play mechanic with real-world interactions with the exhibit; after all, the visitors came to the museum to experience the rainforest itself.
prototype. test. iterate
Through many iterations, our design evolved into the current prototype - an augmented reality game that allows for visitors to discover "hidden treasures" around the rainforest. Visitors are prompted to tug away their mobile phones as they explore the exhibit. When there is a treasure nearby, the phone alerts the user with a unique bird chirping sound. At that point, the user takes out his phone and searches for the augmented reality bird in the viewfinder of his phone's screen. By discovering the "bird" onscreen, a secret of the rainforest is revealed!
