If you haven’t heard, I have a book coming out next year on digital design in museums (from the American Alliance of Museums with Rowman & Littlefield in August, 2022). Having recently completed my first draft, I am now looking for early readers over the next month to provide feedback at the chapter level (or for the heartiest among you, on the entire book).
If you work in or with museums, care about digital design, and like books, please read on. (If you just want to receive book updates, please sign-up here).
The book applies six tools (user research, rapid prototyping, public piloting, iterative design, youth collaboration, and teaming up) to six case studies from my half-dozen years at the American Museum of Natural History and six interviews with colleagues at other museums.
The main body of the book explores six case studies from the Museum to highlight the six tools in action.
- 1. Crime Scene Neanderthal, in which student interns invited family visitors to become Neanderthal Detectives and, armed with a paper guide and a mobile app, solve a science-based mystery in the Hall of Human Origins.
- 2. Cultural halls, specifically how we worked with both Canadian First Nations and New York City youth to augment the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians through both Dreams of the Haida Child (an augmented reality activity guide) and Video Bridge (a telepresence robot).
- 3. Strategizing games-based learning within a museum, looking specifically at Pterosaurs: The Card Game (a youth co-developed, exhibit-inspired product with an AR component), Playing With Dinos (a mobile app that delivered quick social games in the dinosaur halls), and how a youth program created an exhibit-related set of Minecraft assets for the Museum’s web site.
- 4. MicroRangers, a multi-year, quarter-million dollar project that invited visitors to enter Museum exhibits through an augmented reality mobile app and tackle science-based problems in collaboration with both scientists and microscopic organisms.
- 5. XR, specifically how we prototyped our own paleontology behind-the-scenes videos then A:B tested marine experiences in the Hall of Ocean Life.
- 6. Science visualizations, through three projects: an astro-visualization that addressed the topics of mass and gravity through a round of mixed reality Martian golf, interactive science visualizations leveraging CT scans of bat skulls that visitors could hold in their hands, and the touchtable in Finding Flamingos, a youth program focused on how Conservation Biologists protect endangered flamingos through GIS mapping and predictions software.
Each case study is paired with related work in museums around the world, for comparison and contrast. The book explores designing persona-based storytelling in Greece and France, designing with robots in Alaska, designing for narrative and movement in Washington, D.C., designing for locations in Minnesota, designing for off-site experiences in Chicago, and designing spaces for learning in Washington, D.C.
If you do have the time and interest to read any of it in the next four weeks, please share your interest here.
If you decide to dive in, I hope you find it as exciting as I did revisiting the recent past and exploring some of the amazing projects going on at museums around the world.
(Again, if you just want to receive book updates, please sign-up here).
