Virtual Tour: River Otter Activity

—

A real-world project with Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH)

[a]

During the pandemic, Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) provided virtual tours that allow grad schoolers to engage with the exhibitions remotely.

Considering the challenges of tours hosted over Zoom, I led a development of an online interactive activity plan, with the goal to enhance students' active engagement and virtual tour experience. The activities include 2 digital games and 1 hands-on workshop distributed pre, during, and post the tour.‍

[b]

Team:

UX Design Lead and Illustrator - Cindy Liu
UX Researcher - Ellie Li
Designer - Sihan Wu
‍
Mar – May 2020 (3 weeks)

Problem space

How might we boost young students’ engagement in the virtual tour?
How might we provide a holistic learning experience for young students?

Image Source: carnegiemnh.org/explore/hall-of-north-american-wildlife/

Our client—CMNH's goal

CMNH has the goal of infusing Anthropocene perspectives into many of its research, education, and exhibition initiatives to engage audiences both inside and beyond the museum walls.

Anthropocene is:

"A proposed geological epoch that human activity is changing the planet."

Anthropocene values:

[a]

Systems-thinking

[b]

Mutual benefits

[c]

Social justice

[d]

Postivie human stewardship

[e]

Interdisciplinarity

Image Source: carnegiemnh.org/welcome-to-the-anthropocene/

Our approach

We defined 2 Anthropocene values that we aim to achieve through our activities—systems-thinking and positive human stewardship. Specifically, we broke down this 2 Anthropocene values into the 3 learning objectives:

[a]

Students gain a better understanding of wildlife and their environment before the tour

[b]

Students be better engaged during the virtual tour from completing the activities

[c]

Students feel that their actions are powerful in making a change

Project theme

After conducting a background research and interviewing with the Wildlife Expert at CMHN, Sue McLaren, we chose to focus on the reintroduction story of river otter in Western Pennsylvania because it is a local story relevant to the majority of the visitors and that it is a successful human intervention for wildlife protection.

Virtual tour: river otter activity

The river otter activity has 3 parts respectively distributed to pre, during, and post virtual tour. The pre and post-tour activity is 2 interactive games and during-tour activity is 1 hands-on workshop.

[pre-tour activity]

Knowledge.

Before the virtual tour, students play a click-through program to learn about river otters’ general facts like habitat, diet and the story of their reintroduction.

[during-tour activity]

Engagement.

During the tour, students experience the museum exhibitions on Zoom. When they get to the North American Hall and see the river otter display, students have 10 minutes to make an origami otter. This activity allows students to participate and be more hands-on in the tour experience.

Image Source: en.origami-club.com

[post-tour activity]

Behavior.

After the tour, students play an interactive game that narrates river otter’s degrading habitat and asks students to look for pollutants that cause the contamination. Students reflect on what they learned about river otters and further connect their story to the Anthropocene lens.

Usability tests

To understand whether our prototype meets our pre-defined learning impact goals of knowledge, engagement, and behavior, we conducted think-aloud protocols with 22 elementary school students from grades 1-5. We had the following findings:

[a]

By playing the game, users learned the positive human roles in saving wildlife and environment

[b]

Users learned new knowledge about river otters

[c]

Add more interaction methods to boost engagement

[d]

Consider different screen sizes and devices

user flow of pre-tour activity

user flow of post-tour activity