Museum screen design.

This senior capstone project is an active exhibit designed for the Chicago Nature Museum, focused on engaging visitors through playful, educational gameplay. The exhibit encourages users, particularly children and families, to learn about environmental responsibility through direct interaction, movement, and feedback rather than passive observation.

The experience blends touchscreen gameplay, character-driven interaction, and environmental storytelling to make learning intuitive, memorable, and accessible to visitors of all ages.

Exhibit Website

Research

  • We observed that touchscreen exhibits drove the highest engagement across age groups by encouraging hands-on exploration. Lighting and spatial design also played a key role in guiding attention and supporting accessibility.

    Key Takeaways

    • Learning is strongest through active participation

    • Touch interaction engages multi-age audiences

    • Environmental cues significantly impact engagement

Sketches and vision board

  • Sketching enabled rapid iteration on user flow and interactions within a physical exhibit. A vision board defined a playful, curious visual tone that appealed to both children and adults.

    Focus Areas

    • Child-friendly interaction cues

    • Environmental storytelling

    • Balance of education and play

Journey Map

  • The journey map highlighted visitor emotions, time constraints, and attention challenges, revealing the need for an experience that is intuitive, collaborative, and quick to engage.

    Key Insight
    The exhibit needed to be easy to understand, rewarding, and brief enough to fit seamlessly into a busy museum visit.

My Role

  • I led the visual and graphic design for the exhibit, creating a child-friendly interface aligned with the museum’s brand. I designed the start and end screens, key UI elements, and in-game assets in Piskel, while also contributing to user research and field observations. Throughout the project, I collaborated closely with the team to maintain visual consistency, accessibility, and educational clarity.

  • At this stage, visuals were intentionally simplified to focus on core functionality and interaction flow rather than polish.

    The Unity prototype allowed the team to:

    • Validate touch and interaction feedback

    • Test pacing and engagement length

    • Explore how users might physically approach and interact with the exhibit

Low-Fidelity Prototype

second prototype

  • After feedback from the museum director, we refined the prototype to better reflect Chicago’s local context and educational goals. To make the exhibit immediately recognizable, we added familiar elements from the Chicago River and Lake Michigan such as discarded chip bags, kayaks, Divvy bikes, and native fish grounding the experience in real-world environmental issues.

    Key Outcomes

    • Increased educational relevance through local, recognizable details

    • Stronger sense of place tied to Chicago

    • Clear evidence of iteration based on stakeholder feedback

    • Consistent visual language across all assets

user testing

  • We tested the game on-site using the live museum display. Early testing revealed aspect ratio issues, which were fixed before additional sessions with visitors and the museum director. Feedback led to larger, more prominent Chicago buildings, clearer onboarding, and a short tutorial to support learning goals.

    Final testing with children showed high engagement but difficulty with small tap targets, prompting us to increase interaction zones for accessibility and multi-user play.

    Key Outcomes

    • Fixed real-world display issues

    • Stronger city recognition and clarity

    • Added instructional onboarding

    • Improved accessibility for younger users

Sound Design

  • We designed original, kid-friendly audio to be playful and calming rather than overstimulating. Light melodic loops, xylophone-inspired tones, and positive feedback sounds reinforced learning while remaining subtle enough for a shared museum environment.

Final screens

  • The final exhibit concept brings together UX research, interaction design, gameplay mechanics, and sensory design to create an engaging educational experience. By considering not only the screen but also sound, environment, and visitor context, this project demonstrates a holistic approach to experience design within a public, educational setting.