Learning at the Burke

Burke Museum

The Burke Museum is a natural history museum located on the campus of University of Washington, Seattle.
The museum reopened its doors in October 2019 with brand new exhibits after a year of renovation. Visitors
can explore galleries with live workrooms and visible archive collections through large glass walls.

Context

Our team was challenged to create a new platform for visitors to optimize their museum visit.
After doing initial research, we then narrowed the scope of our goals.

We asked ourselves

How might we cultivate a shared learning experience between parents and children
by encouraging exploration, curiosity, and engagement?

Team

Devansh Gandhi, Melissa Nunez, Verli Chen

> Mobile
‍> 2020 (weeks)

Learning at the Burke

Explore the space with your camera
and collect artifacts.

Engage with Content

Answer brief questions and complete tasks using the contextual information you find.

Home & Backpack

View upcoming events and past memories on the home screen. Learn and collect from artifacts in your backpack collection.

Leaderboard

Compare your collection with
others players at the museum.

Starting

First, we visited the museum to collect information and to create a map of the current visitor experience.
This helped us find opportunities and pain points to narrow our goals.

Journey Map
‍

Our team interviewed 4 visitor groups and 3 Burke staff members.

Finding: The majority of kids ask to be directed towards the dinosaur when they first enter.
Insight: Kids are very excited to learn about one topic but might be missing out on the other exhibits.

Initial Interviews

We used this observation method by sitting in the museum and taking notes on visitor behavior.

Finding: Children can easily run off towards what they’re drawn to.
Insight: Parents and children often have different goals. This creates friction in the learning experience of both parties.

“Fly on the Wall”

We analyzed existing museum programs catered for children; Met Kids.

Comparative Analysis

We collected data from existing programs catered to children at the Burke Museum.

Existing Programs

Process

From our initial research, we decided to focus our product towards 5th graders.  
Their cognitive and intellectual development allow for the desired reading and problem solving of our goal.

Audience

Our team set three design principles to guide our concept direction.

1. Learning Oriented
2. Personalized
3. Discoverable

Design Principles

After downselecting to our concept, we determined the goals for our target visitors.

1. Be able to learn and capture knowledge from specific museum exhibits.
2. Help people explore their interests in an engaging way.
3. Bring awareness to new journeys in the museum. 

User Goals

Prototype Exploration