Time
5 Week
Team
Individual Project
Role
User Research
UX Designer
Deliverables
Arduino Setup
Game Demo
I designed an interactive experience - Ancient Train, to show dynamic railway technology and knowledge to preschool children visited National Railway Museum, reducing the burden of reading railway introduction for them for their parents
This was the final project of User experience Design course at University of York.I conducted user research, brainstorming ideas, prototyping, testing and polishing the designs.
BACKGROUND
The National Railway Museum is a museum in York forming part of the Science Museum Group. The museum tells the story of rail transport in Britain and its impact on society. It is the home of the national collection of historically significant railway vehicles such as Mallard, Stirling Single, Duchess of Hamilton and a Japanese bullet train.
The biggest challenge faced by the National Railway Museum is how to present railways – a technology all about movement and travel – in a museum where things are, by necessity, static.
Not only are vehicles in the collection difficult to move, but some are too old and vulnerable to move safely or to even allow the public access.
Based on visitor feedback, the museum has identified a selection of vehicles that are currently closed or partially restricted to the public, and which they would like the students in University of York to consider designing an interactive experience around.
PROBLEM
The visitors hope that the museum will offer more interactive experiences for children as it is easy for children to lose interest in the museum exhibits because these are too plain and present static parameters in a straightforward way.
OPPORTUNITY
How might we design an interactive experience to help parents who visit the National Railway Museum to present trains' knowledge to their children more conveniently and interestingly?
PROCESS
Empathize
Define
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Test
Reflect
Field Research
Persona
Data Research
Affinity Map
Design Concept
HMW Questions
Brainstorming
Solution Sketches
Greyscales
Usability Test
Low Fidelity Prototype
User Test (greyscales)
UI Design
Takeaways & Improvements
High Fidelity Prototype
EMPATHIZE
Field Research
I plan to conduct on-the-spot investigation to get the general plan of the current museum. Based on the ethical restriction of University of York, we are not allowed to do the interview with visitors, so the Museum doint the interview and send ua the feedback from tourists on the current experience.
AEIOU
After analysing the AEIOU observation framework records, I synthesised them, as shown below.
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As a real train is huge, it is difficult to move it around the museum. The visitors’ tour is thus discrete rather than following a sequence.
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The total number of trains in the museum is 89 (Science Museum Group, 2022), and only very small parts of the trains are open and accessible for visitors’ experience. There is no other interactive content overall, and the tour is thus slightly dull for long periods.
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Due to the epidemic and the requirement of social distance, docents are usually no longer chosen by visitors.
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The museum visitors are mainly preschool children.
On the basis of this research, I aim to present interactive multimedia contents about trains so that the National Railway Museum visitors, especially the preschool children, will immensely enjoy their visits to the museum.
EMPATHIZE
I hope I can get inspiration from the existing cases and understand how similar museums provide user experience.
Affinity Map
To refine my ideas, I interviewed several random visitors on site, focusing on how they felt about the overall museum experience, what they felt needed to be experienced as less enjoyable and suggestions for improvement. I aggregated all the information I received from the museum curators, as well as feedback from the museum visitors I interviewed about their museum experience, and created an affinity map based on this information.
The points for improvement below were derived from the museum visitors’ feedback shown in the above figure and were analysed.
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Most of the visitors hope that they can go inside the train and see its interior or get to know its internal structure.
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The museum parking fee is too high and the prices of the café offerings are prohibitive.
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The visitors hope that the museum will offer more interactive experiences for children as it is easy for children to lose interest in the museum exhibits because these are too plain and present static parameters in a straightforward way.
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The museum has changed little since its establishment, and the visitors hope that new attractions will be added.
I found out through my field visits, that the main visitors of the museum are preschool children and their parents. Thus, among the above points, I focused on the third point in this research.
Persona
To further understand my target users, I used the affinity map I had created as a starting point to create a persona: Amber, a woman with a daughter. I brainstormed ideas from the map to create a more realistic character as Amber would play an important role later in the research.
Design Concept
Ideation
Sketches
About the Sketch
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Frame Size: 1.85m * 1.20m
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Interactive Screen Size: 1.28m * 0.72m
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The Functions of Control Pad:
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Using the game controller to control the directions.
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Pressing the ENTER key to choose the objects.
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The Height of Control Pad: 0.60m
Game Prototype
Development
Arduino
Get Data
Send data to Processing
Game Scene Setup
JoyStick Sensor
Controller
UI Design
Visual Design (Interactive Board)
Outcome
I created a program by processing. The players need to follow the prompt and find the designated train in order to pass the level and collect the game illustrations. Once the game has officially started, the player can move the train by controlling the joystick to clear the obstacles covering the background image (using the classic emoticons to add to the fun). When the player has successfully found the train (name shown on screen), the train illustration would be unlocked and a brief background knowledge about the train would be displayed on the screen.