Wildlife crossing
An immersive multi-sensory interactive learning experience for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Studio project
with Himani Auplish, Ivar Dameron, Christina Ip
Design Research, Interaction Design, Prototyping with Leap Motion
6 weeks
Interactive installation
Project Objectives
Today, many museums are facing the challenge of transitioning from rigid institutions to experiential and flexible spaces. Museums are turning to virtual reality, apps, and interactive experiences to attract visitors.
The studio project challenged us to create an immersive multi-sensory experience in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History that provides wayfinding, information browsing, experiential learning, or social interaction.
How can we create a multi-sensory, interactive learning experience at Carnegie Museum of Natural History that helps people better understand the environment?
Project outcome
Wildlife Crossing is an interactive diorama offering an immersive experience where visitors can explore North American wildlife through gestures, visuals, and audio.
User journey 01
Wayfinding
Starting from the entry point of the museum, we designed a series of posters and displays to guide users to our exhibition experience.
User journey 02
Entering the North American Hall
When users enter the North American Hall, they will see the motion detection zone projected on the floor. These detection zone indicates and invites users to stand in front of the dioramas to start the experience.
User journey 03
Diorama Experience
The diorama experience starts with onboarding and instructions on how to interact. Users can change the season and surroundings of the dioramas by swiping. And they can tap hotspots to browse detailed information about the animal. Lastly, for every season, there would be an interactive game that users can learn about the animal’s behavior with body gestures.
User journey 04
The booklet
At the end of the experience, we wanted to provide something that the users could take home as a souvenir. We designed a physical booklet with information about the animal in the present world. In the elk case, we provided information about an elk trail in Pennsylvania where people can go hiking and interact with the elks in real life.
how the diorama works 01
System map
For each diorama, there are two projectors, one motion sensor, and speakers connected to a computer to control the interaction. We also incorporated changing of lights to highlight certain areas of the dioramas under different scenes.
how the diorama works 02
Interactive gestures
There are five basic hand gestures for the experience. In the final prototype demonstration, we were able to implement Hover, Tap, and Swipe.
Onboarding
Start the experience
Flick
Go back to display screen
Hover
Hotspots comes into focus
Swipe
Go to the next season
Tap
Select hotspots
how the diorama works 03
Interactive body motions
For every diorama, there will be one scene for each season. For the prototype, we designed four gestures on the elk diorama. We designed the gesture to match the educational information. For example, elks shed the antlers in the winter. Therefore, the movement for the winter game is to shake their head to mimic the action.
Winter
Shaking head to shed antlers
Spring
Shaking body to shed coat
Summer
Clapping fast to fight other male elk
Fall
Running to migrate
Research
We started our project by visiting the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH). We visited different areas of the museum looking for opportunities and possible improvements of the museum.
opportunity 01
Interactions
There were quite a few interactive installations in the museum. Some of them were pretty popular with the visitors. However, the installations are mostly scattered here and there without a systemic design.
opportunity 02
Signange
There were quite a few interactive installations in the museum. Some of them were pretty popular with the visitors. However, the installations are mostly scattered here and there without a systemic design.
opportunity 03
Information
A lot of the information in the museum was pure text. We find it less inviting for users to read through it.
opportunity 04
Families
There were a lot of families and couples in the museum, especially on the weekends. We find it particularly interesting to see how children interact with the exhibitions.
We also had the opportunity to interview the Associate Curator & the staff at the museum. They gave us valuable insights on challenges the museum is currently facing and the museum’s vision to renovate.
key insights
Raise awareness about the Anthropocene and the changing environment we live in.
The existing information on displays is outdated and misaligned with current societal attitudes and values.
Lack of funds and time to create and renovate exhibitions from scratch.
The exploratory research guided us to focuse our project on the "Hall of North American Wildlife" section, designing for families with children in the age group of 6-10.
Families was the biggest audience we saw in the museum. We also discovered the children are curious and eager to interact with installations in the exhibits with parents as a supporting role to guide them through the learning experience.
The diorama exhibitions were created in the 1920s/30s. It is a beloved fixture of the museum collection. However, the installations are static and outdated. We saw the opportunity to update the dioramas with interactive technology and create a learning experience to teach children about animals and their relationship to the environment.
Prototyping
We started prototyping with Figma to illustrate the vision.
Then we investigated multiple motion-detection tools and made working prototypes.
The team chose Kinect as one of our first options because it offers skeleton tracking which would be perfect for the body motions that we designed. However, after doing some tests, we realized that although Kinect supports reading depth, it is hard to turn it into a gesture input to trigger visual outputs.
Later on, we looked into Leap Motion. With the library supporting four kinds of gestures, it turned out to be more fitting to our project’s purpose. We used “Swipe“ as the trigger to change seasons and “Tap“ as the trigger for hotspots.
Final demo
We set up a open demo session in the end of the project to showcase the experience.
Learnings & Takeaways
Exploring Technology
During this project, we had the opportunity to explore various technologies and build a working prototype. Despite none of the team members having prior experience with motion-detecting technology and limited coding knowledge, I am proud of what we achieved in a short period of time. We dedicated time to research the devices, teach ourselves coding, and although the process involved endless trial and error, we learned a lot throughout the process.
Immersive Interaction Design
This project centered around physical space design and creating a comprehensive experience within a museum setting, rather than focusing solely on digital screens. With our target audience being parents and children, we had several discussions on how they physically interact and enjoy the experience together. Through this project, I was able to incorporate my skills in architecture and use emerging technology to enhance the overall experience.
