A Day at the Museum
Designing an Exhibit
Our objective was to develop an exhibit relating to a design movement or technology in a certain time period that included at least three touchpoints. Our team expressed interest in the history of graffiti and how it is/was perceived, so we chose it as our topic of interest for this project.
My Contributions
I contributed towards the ideation of some of our touchpoints in the exhibit. I also helped figure out which touchpoints should be in certain parts of the exhibit and how the user should move through it. I also helped document parts of our design process. In the research part, I helped put together some of the questions we were going to ask in the survey and interview.
Meet the Team
Teammates
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Avery Kruppe
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Elizabeth Jarrell
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Jasmine Li
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Azaria Dunston
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Ava Watkins
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Cora Hughey
Overview
Problem Scope
Our team was tasked with creating a museum exhibit about a design movement or technology in a certain time period. Sticking with this theme, our group decided to focus on the beginning of graffiti in the late 20th century. We concentrated on three locations throughout the United State: New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. We chose these three large cities because the users we surveyed (more on that later) were interested in learning about graffiti in different places. Covering graffiti around the world would be far too much for our small exhibit, so we narrowed it down to graffiti across the United States in those three cities.
Goals of our museum
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Visitors learn the cultural context behind the growth of graffiti
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Visitors learn about individual artists and their motivations
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Visitors understand the different styles and "canvases" of graffiti
Research
Secondary Research
Our team was very curious about graffiti, especially since we did not have much knowledge about it. In order to learn more about graffiti, we did some research on the history of it, the artists behind graffiti in the three chosen cities, and some graffiti exhibits around the United States. We used our findings as inspiration for our touchpoints and the overall feel of the exhibit.
Primary Research
Before we went and made a museum bases on what we learned from our secondary research, we wanted to know what people would be interested in learning about graffiti itself. In order to do this, we sent out a survey to Purdue students to learn about their attitudes towards graffiti and topics of interest. We also reached out to a few museums to ask some questions, receiving one response from the Director and Curator of the Purdue Galleries.
Primary Research Insights
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Museums should resonate with people - location is important
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People wanted to learn about graffiti around the world, but that is too wide of a scope for us
Based on the results of our primary research, we placed our theoretical museum in New York City, where the theme of our museum is more relevant to the locals there. We decided to focus on graffiti from Chicago and Los Angeles as well.
Cultural Probe
One of our requirements was to develop and send out a cultural probe to our user group, which consisted of local New Yorkers and visiting tourists interested in the graffiti in that area. In order to nail the aesthetics in our museum, we asked a few locals from each city to create a mood board full of images, songs, or anything that reminds them of their city. We received photos of scenery, food, buildings, etc. with much less focus on graffiti in that area. We used these results to consider how our museum can expose locals to this overlooked art form in their city.
Ideation
Sketching/Prototyping
Using the findings from our research and the results of our cultural probe, we sketched out our ideas for the look and touchpoints for each of the rooms in the exhibit. After we completed our sketches, we reviewed each other's suggestions and from there, decided where we were going to place our touchpoints throughout the exhibit. We also created a small mockup of the museum layout, which served as a reference for our high-fidelity prototype of the exhibit.
Mockup of the exhibit layout in Miro
We also created a summarized version of our user journey journey map that shows the flow of our museum and what the user would feel and engage with in each room.
Final Design
We created the final version of our design in Sims 3, but did experience some issues due to the limited capabilities with the tool. Our team also did not have too much experience with Sims, so it was a pretty step learning curve for us. Our final museum design begins with the main room, where the visitor interacts with our API web experience that allows users to see graffiti in street view on Google Maps.
The main room leads to the subway-themed New York City room, which displays information about famous graffiti artists through a subway touchpoint. The New York City room leads to the Chicago room, which simulates illegal graffiti activity and the negative perspectives on graffiti. The last room is the Los Angeles room displays graffiti on unique canvases, including the LA river cats painted on storm drains. The tour ends at a gift shop and tag wall where customers can put their own graffiti on a supplied tag.
Full museum walkthrough in Sims 3