Explore it, Make It! is a playful, creative new way for children to discover the Science Museum Group collection that has been launched on Wonderlab+, our website for families – and on our educators learning resources website.
Our new Science and Innovation Park stores over 300,000 objects that are not on public display at our Science Museum Group museums. Many people will not get the opportunity to see these objects in person, so we wanted to create a way for them to discover and interact with some of the many intriguing and interesting objects in an active and engaging way..
CREATING SOMETHING THAT WOULD BE USEFUL AND RELEVANT…
At the outset of the project we set up a focus group of primary school teachers. They told us how they often struggle to find quality images to use in types of activities particularly focused around design, website creation and coding. This led to a proposed new learning resource idea… Create ‘bundles of images’ from our collection that could be used for such activities.
Inspired by this suggestion, we developed a pilot resource which included 10 themed bundles of images along with information about each object.
We tested this pilot resource with Key Stage 2 teachers and the feedback we received was positive. They liked the flexibility and creativity the resource offered, so we new we were heading in the right direction.
We moved forward and created a second, more structured prototype providing game-based coding projects using a selection of the objects as ‘sprites’. This was tested by families, who found the activity enjoyable, and importantly it spared discussions within the family groups.
The creative IDEA
With the insights, gathered from our pilot testing, in mind we knew we wanted to offer both a creative activity and an image gallery to view objects and find out more about them.
To produce the interactive itself we worked with an agency called Fish in a Bottle and together we devised a creative approach based on the idea of the user taking an adventure through the collection and collecting objects on their journey.
The objects that were collected would then be placed onto a postcard that could be downloaded and shared with friends and family.
User testing
During the concept design phase, we tested a paper prototype of this creative idea with families visiting r museums.
They seem to really engage with the concept of creating a postcard with objects from the collection and enjoyed the creative process and were excited by their creations.
The activity seem to also sparked questions and curiosity about the objects, and they seemed really interested to find out more about them.
It also showed us what type of objects children seem to be most interested and engaged with. Examples included:
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- A steam locomotive
- A trumpet playing robot
- A Gameboy
MAKING ADJUSTMENTS
The first functional prototype was tested with 10 children and their parents from around the UK. However, with this testing phase, we found that although they still enjoyed making their postcards – they didn’t fully understand the ‘adventure’ narrative of the game.
This give us a good insight and basis to further refine the user journey – and to guide users more purposefully through the narrative and the activity.
Another finding was that users enjoyed the ‘gallery’ part of the activity (an option in the game that more simply brings together all images and information about the objects). They seemed excited by the opportunity to learn more information about the different objects. There was still feedback that this aspect could be more interactive, which promoted us to present the facts in a more engaging way- using hotspots which are the question marks on the below image which hopefully help draw users’ attention to that area of the webpage.
LAUNCH
The game was finally launched in May, and since then, we have really enjoyed seeing how users interact with the game and the wonderfully creative postcards that they create. Below are some examples of recent creations.
Try out Explore It, Make It for yourself – and see what adventure you will have.
What to read next
If you’ve enjoyed this blog, here are some related blogs we recommend…
- Wonderlab+, a user centered design process for a website that is open for all
- Creating videos of our hands on resources
This blog was written by Sophie Nicoll, as part of our “digital series” looking at how we make our websites accessible and open for all.