Parallel design session - Wild design

The second design in the parallel design exercise was the wild one. We (Victor and Ellinor) teamed up to create a version of the virtual reality-idea where we would push the boundaries of our design. We started the process of "Yes and..." by tossing out the idea that the children would travel through the museum on a conveyer belt, similar to the ones you fetch your bags from after a flight. The children would wear a device similar to the Oculus Rift mentioned in the previous blog post, and perceive a completely different museum than their parents, with added element of an augmented reality. After tossing the ideas back and forth a few times, we came up with the idea of a glass tube that would run along the ceiling of each room throughout the museum. The inspiration to this came from the plastic tubes you can attach to hamster cages to make the hamsters world a bit bigger. In this way we could create an experience for kids without having to create a separate kids area or changing the experience for adults.

The glass in the tubes would work as see-trough displays to give us the opportunity of adding 3D elements to the museum from the children's perspective. These elements would be connected to the exhibitions theme. We created a model to exemplify this. In the pictures below you can view a possible version of how the museum would look if there was an exhibition of animal pictures.

Here we imagined a picture of a lion. From the children's perspective trough the glass of the tube, the lion is coming out of the picture itself into the room. We also discussed that the children might have the possibility of changing the augmented reality by for example poking the screen to scare the lion back into the picture.

We wanted to show that the entire room could be changed to fit the theme of the exhibition, instead of just adding a couple of elements. Here the museum has gotten a grass floor, a camp fire, a river and some forestry on the wall. The tube would of course also have speakers that could convey the sound of a stream and the crackle of the camp fire.

The idea of a tube beat the idea of a conveyer belt since that would minimize the disturbing of other visitors, and also allow the children to move by them selves. It was important for us to - even though this idea is wild - keep our initial focus in mind, where the solution to the problem would make things more interesting for kids without making the museum into a playground.

We also discussed that there would have to be natural stops and exits along the tube, where the children could get some fresh air and speak to their parents. 

We really enjoyed coming up with this concept and even though it's a good idea we think the biggest problem - except from making the technology work - is that it creates an experience where the kids are separated from their parents. One of our key points was to create an experience where the kids would enjoy the museum with parents. If that wasn't  an issue we could just as well create a kids area at the entrance.