Aristeia

Project>

Aristeia

Role>

UX | UI designer, researcher, branding artist, package designer

Client>

Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh

Team members>

KIRSTEN RISPIN, JUNGHEE “ASHLEY” KOO, ALEJANDRA “ALY” SOTO, DAVE PALUMBO, ANTONIN “TONY” FUSCO

Objective>

A new type of project at the ETC focusing on in depth research and discovering new ways to think and problem solve. Aristeia team directed these efforts into exploring how to facilitate family unit learning and present it in a viable format to support MAKESHOP faculty.

Contribution>

Participated as a researcher and practiced UX methods such as survey, user validations, ground truth, factor analysis, user interviews. Suggested and designed the UX approach through the archetype model of the visitors. Also, contributed by creating card deck package to support teaching artists’ professional development tool.

Client Pre-condition>

• Our client didn’t want our team to make any clear conclusions of the project.
• We should have done activities or design in the MAKESHOP space only with the materials given by the museum.

Re-defining the objectives>

Our discovery environment was MAKESHOP of the museum that provides creative maker space and facilities for the visitors with teaching artists. We were given the task of the discovery how all family members of the visitor group are engaged in creative learning experience. Our team tried to find the solutions by designing learning experience of our own with limited conditions. However, it seemed it did not work at the beginning. We realized that teaching artists had already great teaching skills and design applications through successful demonstrations based on the museum’s design Principles of Practice. Then, what would be our team’s role? They were already great!

Full observation>

Our team regularly and frequently visited the museum and spent time enough to understand the visitors and also teaching artists (TA) and maker space. We practiced also quantitative and qualitative surveys and interviews numerous times.

Gaining respects by respecting the users>

At the first stage, our team’s approach was to make the conclusions quickly and suggest things to TA, but we sooner realized that respecting the maker space’s culture and fully understanding their experiences and listening to the problems from them were the key factors to define realistic objectives and find better solutions. Once we gained respects from the teaching artists and also project manager, and learning scientists, we had better positions to understand the project and get supported from them better.

Communication>

communication made an important role through the whole process of the project. We had communications with learning scientists and teaching artists, project managers, even with the diverse group of the kids and teachers and parents, other family members frequently. This helped our team a lot to define the project goals and understand the needs, also get supported in better ways from the museum.

Shifting the user group>

We had the same ultimate goal of extracting better family unit learning experience in the maker space. But, we did not need to design the learning experience by ourselves because teaching artists already did great jobs by teaching and demonstrating successfully according to the museum’s Principles of Practice. So, we decided to shift our team’s user group from the visitors into the TAs to support their goals with effective professional development tools. Our team’s struggles were resolved drastically from that point. We got the point!

Satisfying learning scientists>

Learning scientists of the museum’s research team were the supervisor group of our team to define the success of our project. Our UX methods and discovery process, especially archetype model we devised satisfied them fully. That surprised our team also.

Learner Behavior Model>

Our team followed meticulous UX research methods and started to focus on archetype models of the visitors. We devised eight different archetype models of the visitors including rainbow type that represents the perfect ideal type to learn successfully in the maker space. This approach attracted TAs and learning scientists by agreeing that they confronted most of the model types in the real maker space.

User Verification>

To prove that this model we devised was being applied to the real visitor groups, we practiced the UX methods of Ground Truth and Factor Analysis. This verification proved that our type model was almost close to the real world.

Professional Development Tool>

Our proven Learner Behavior Model was approved by the museum and we got approval to implement the model through the card deck form. We created the branding package called MakerBox within the package box that consists of Learner Cards, Inspirational Cards, Museum’s Principle of Practice Cards.

Client meeting (Understand the client) – Observation (Understand the user) – Explore design ideas – Playtest – Interview with teaching artists – Shift users from museum family guests into teaching artists at MAKESHOP – Survey & Interview – Create eight archetype models of museum guest characters – Ground Truth – User validations – Factor analysis – Create card deck package – Workshop with teaching artists and museum learning scientists – Hand over all resources to the museum

Became an open source>

A professional development card deck derived from the results of Aristeia’s research and provided MAKESHOP materials. Aristeia’s Learner Behavior Model along with the corresponding proof of concept surveys and analysis are included. MakerBox that was derived from the Learner Behavior Model became an open source card deck to support other museum’s professional development tool through Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and Aristeia at Entertainment Technology Center.

Presentation at MIT Summit>

Aristeia team also presented our UX research journeys with the museum and Learner Behavior Model at the Libre Learn Lab summit from MIT in Boston.