Can teenagers co-design new digital experiences for museums? For six years at the American Museum of Natural History, we did just that. This week I was delighted to present how at the MuseumNext’s Digital Learning Summit.
Named after an earlier title for my upcoming book on digital design in museums, my session was called The Revolution Has Been Digitized: MicroRangers, Youth Programs, and a Toolkit for the Future of Museums. I highlighted the toolkit from which we drew at AMNH: guerilla research, rapid prototyping, public piloting, iterative design, and team building. The case study focused on MicroRangers, a geolocative AR game that invited visitors to shrink to the microscopic level and battle threats to biodiversity within the Museum’s permanent exhibits. Youth designed and voiced the characters, prototyped the interactives, and much much more.
When MuseumNext pivoted during the pandemic to an all remote conference, they landed on the format of :20 of pre-recorded video followed by :10 of live Q&A. That meant, working from home, I had to imagine how to create a video that would be engaging for a global audience that would have spent hours already staring at their screen. I also had to write, film, and edit it all on my own. Phew!
While you can’t experience it as intended at the conference – during a live and active text-based chat – I think you’ll still learn a lot about the project below and might appreciate how much fun I had putting this together.
In retrospect, I think it does a decent job both sharing good learning from one of my favorite digital projects but also does demonstrating the value people will find in my new book when it comes out next year.
Oh, and as I shared in the chat, this presentation is strictly Bring Your Own Spoon.
