Week 2

This week we had our kickoff meeting with our clients. We met with stakeholders from all across the museum from the Director of Education to the Director of Design to the Director of New Media to hear about their goals and aspirations for our project. Our main clients will be Anne & Joy, from the exhibit design team, while Rebecca will remain our conduit for communication. The main emphasis of the meeting was on our collaboration being a partnership, with strong reciprocal communication between our teams.

During this meeting, we clarified timeline and goals. In addition, we discussed hopes for this piece. What do we want to create? And how do we create it?

We distilled the conversation down to the following design pillars:

• Focus on family/child + caregiver
• Respect children, don’t pander, not “cute”
• Children can appreciate sophisticated design
• Divergent experience (open ended play/exploratory)
• Socio-emotional learning (qualities of kindness)
• “Cutting edge of technology in a timeless way”
• Safe + stable + robust (no buttons/hand-eye coordination)
• Multi-layered content: fun + engaging for ALL, repeatable experiences
• “Play with real stuff”

Through the lens of these pillars we began to brainstorm concept ideas from the physical to the abstract. We were challenged to think of designing an experience that is “cutting-edge in a timeless way.” Much like how Fred Rogers was cutting-edge for his time, but still communicating simple ideas rooted in socio-emotional learning. In our brainstorming we were particularly drawn to the idea of touch and having a physical takeaway/call to action.

We were particularly inspired by Neil Mendoza’s Mechanical Masterpieces, Good Eggs, and the Empathy Museum.

This weekend we’ll continue to refine our ideas and develop our pitch deck.

Until then, be kind,
One Small Act