Defining the Space:

To begin our investigation into user engagement, we first sought out to find who the typical museum-goer was. Assigned with this task in the peak of the pandemic when most everything was closed, we polled a set of volunteers that were contacted by the museum to generate our user base.

Finding Our Users:

We had two running surveys to poll participants, one targeted at visitors and the other targeted at full-time staff members. From this data we identified the usership of the visitors and common pain points of the staff that might point to some of their engagement frustrations.

Categorizing Our Data:

We were able to categorize museum-goers into three categories: K-8 students, college students (most likely there on a class-related assignment) and the general public that all usually stayed between 30 minutes and an hour.

Finding Our Focus:

Going off of this user base, we were able to focus our solution on who we felt became the main group, students K-8. These students typically came on field trips and were split into three groups that would travel on each floor separately. This organization would help us in our early prototyping and mapping the museum.

Knowing the Client’s Process:

Reflecting back on our data collected from the museum staff members, we recognized that most of the people guiding others through the museum were volunteers that had only a few days of training. This helped define our engagement solution, as we now knew that the solution we were to create would have to be self-sufficient, as constant staff changes would make it very difficult for us to implement with a staff that was constantly changing.

Knowing What Already Exists:

We then looked at current systems in place. The museum had a paper scavenger hunt that had been written for elementary students and typically took the average child 20 minutes to complete (as tested by some very enthusiastic school-aged children). We saw this as a place of interest, and set out to create an enhanced version of the scavenger hunt by implementing technology as a point of interest and commodity to the experience.

Finding Our Limitations:

To create such an experience, I ran an assessment of the technologies that were already in place or available to us. We found the museum had a set of 10 ipads that were fairly new, and began to work on a scavenger hunt that would work within their framework with thoughts of a mobile or web application.

Reaching a Dead End:

We first deemed QR codes to be the obvious solution to create an interesting scavenger hunt. This option seemed relatively inexpensive and easy to apply within the existing frameworks of the museum. We pursued this solution with gusto, only to find halfway through prototype development that the museum staff wanted to explore a solution without QR codes entirely.

Redirecting Our Focus:

This proved to be a major setback and learning experience to our team. We had invested a lot of time and resources into this solution, and zoom fatigue had made starting over a hard endeavor to conquer. As a leader, I first addressed the misunderstanding we found with the client, and assured them that they would be more involved in our next steps to find a solution they felt would best fit them.

Finding Our Footing:

Faced with a terrible case of writer’s block, vision finally came to us in the form of an augmented reality experience. Utilizing the framework of Adobe Aero, we were able to create a scavenger hunt that would allow users to point their iPads at objects that already lived around them. In this process, we were able to design a scavenger hunt that students could enjoy through technology, without having QR codes scattered around the museum that took away from the exhibits. Being in a virtual environment, we were able to create the scavenger hunt using photos from the virtual tours they had posted. In this way, we had created an experience for the museum without ever actually entering it.

An Ending That Became A Beginning:

When proposing this solution to the museum, although excited about the possibility of an augmented experience, this project failed to land. Although they agreed this would be an interesting idea to test, the timing of the pandemic had brought all of their work and budget to a halt. Faced with this tragic ending, I took the newfound knowledge found in augmented reality and applied it to my next project. See Branch Out: A virtual reality dance experience.