Pop-U p Museum Exploration
Identify an existing aspect or experience in current society that can be redesigned to improve and advance the overall experience and industry.
Sponsors
Avanade
Duration
Jan 2019-May 2019
My Role
Project Lead
Project Type
Sponsored class-project
//problem space
Technology and society progresses at an exponential rate, with new technologies improving experiences users never knew could be improved. Oftentimes this is because users believe the experience(s) to be an accepted norm. For example: Uber for transportation, the Nintendo Switch for video games, and Netflix for entertainment. As such, identify an existing aspect or experience in current society that can be redesigned to improve and advance the overall experience and industry.
//research
Exploring existing technologies & narrowing our scope
With this project being exploratory and very broad, each team member kept a log of things that we had grown complacent with. The team discussed several different ideas and affinity diagrammed these ideas and eventually narrowed it down to three ideas based on opportunity and how enjoyable the project could be for the team. We chose online shopping, concert experience, & museums and eventually settled on museums.
The team noticed the theme of immersive activities within the exhibits. From here, we decided that Pop-Up Museums would be our best route as they were immersive, emerging, trendy, and an exciting project to tackle.
User research
We discovered that pop-up museum-goers were within the age range of 13-28 years. Since pop-up museums were focused on immersive activities and instagrammable moments, we reached out to Instagram influencers who have attended a pop-up museum exhibit before. We defined an influencer as someone who has an established credibility or a large audience/following (ie. 20k followers) as well as promoting items they have purchased or are sponsored by.
Here’s what they said…
“I think pop ups are best experienced when with a photographer who can capture the fun you are having, vs trying to accomplish both tasks.”
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“I definitely love the idea of enjoying art that is temporary. It’s like a blip in history that I get to be a part of it.”
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"The best pop ups have at least one or two installations that are highly interactive - not just for posing, built in cameras for selfies (especially for ceiling shots), with a crew that are upbeat, friendly and engaged."
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//ideation
To kickstart our ideation, we felt it necessary to create a user journey map. This helped us gain better insight to touchpoints and insights of what a museum experience is all about. This led the team to focus on the way users interact with their phones to take photos.
Three possible technologies we could utilize to enhance this experience:
Key Fobs
Interactive Photo Wall
AR Technology
//solution
Our very own pop-up museum
In order to properly test our idea, we utilized body-storming. Thus the "Avanado" museum was born-an avocado themed pop-up museum! I assigned each team member a section within this pop-up to work on. My role in this was to make sure each station was set up correctly and the whole process was running smoothly. I also was in charge of the immersive photo-wall.
There were four total parts to our body-storming experience.
Check In
Interactive Photo Wall
Interactive Exhibit
AR Reflection Room
Takeaways
Participants felt uncomfortable without their phones
Confusion on how the key fob worked in relation to taking photos
Option to do the exhibits out of order if one area is too packed
We had Brigitte working the "check in" or information desk. Visitors purchased tickets prior to this event and were informed of our "no phone policy." We collected the participants phones in exchange for a fob to use for photo-taking. Phones were placed in a "locker" and we even charged their phones as they walked through our museum!
Here, participants had the opportunity to pose with an avocado-themed background using their fobs. These screens mostly consisted of prompting the user to activate their fob with this wall, when to start posing, and when to end the session. These photos were sent to a cloud and also sent to our AR experience which I discuss more down below.
Participants could color funny pictures of avocados, write out some avocado puns on our pun wall, and walk through our gallery with famous photos of avocados photoshopped in!
At the end of their visit, participants would be directed to a room where they could review their experience by using AR technology. In reality, the participants would have some sort of AR headset where they would look around the room and see all of their photos they had taken. We felt like this made it more personal and engaging. We also viewed it as a point of reflection.