Designing a virtual children’s museum as a mobile application with the help of VR/AR. This project focuses on the Persepolis salon of the Louvre Museum which let children dress in a particular way as they wish and explore ancient times.
Project Type: A Group Project with HCI Masters team at State University of New York at Oswego- This Project has been accepted for poster presentation at SUNY OSWEGO.
Responsibilities: UX Researcher/Designer
Timeline: Aug 2022 – Dec 2022
Problem statement: In comparison to the last decade or one hundred years, modern technology has seen a significant transformation. The creation of new tools and machinery makes work simpler than ever before. They have a significant influence on making life distinct and even simpler.
It’s essential that children grow up in a modern world with cutting-edge technologies like VR/AR and MR. Designing a virtual exhibition for children is one of the many methods to introduce children to this new technology.
Research: First, the designers looked into virtual reality and the use of modern technology in museums or exhibitions. Also searched among kids and found what they use and how they use modern technology. The Pluggy platform was so helpful in this part.
In the next step they used other references and find key definitions such as Virtual Reality (VR), Virtual Museum, Digital Technologies, Augmented Reality (AR), and Pluggy.
Project Aims: Create a kid-friendly application that introduces children to the history of various cultures through a virtual reality exhibit. As the most visited museum in the world is the Louver Museum, this project focuses on designing a virtual children’s museum on the Persepolis salon of the Louvre Museum.
Persona: personas help the team to answer one of the most crucial concerns, “Who am I designing for?” by fostering a deep understanding of a target audience, which is essential to develop amazing solutions.
Ideation: Developing an area for prototyping and evaluation by creating task Analyses, sketches, and mood boards.
Chilly Mo App: Chilly Mo means Children`s Museum. It is made by combining both children and museums in one word.
The theme of the “Chilly Mo” application is VR and AR environments. In this application kids between 5 to 10 years of age are the main users. Since some of them need help, teachers, parents, or guardian are hidden users. Children can be players in this application alone or in a group.
Task analysis: Task analysis is one of the important parts of a project to recognize all steps and sub-steps the user needs to do. The user tasks of this project are in two parts: Online (4 steps) and In-person (5 steps). Each of them has some sub-tasks.
Sketch: In the design thinking process of this project, sketching shows graphically the development of the ideas and the visual representation of the product’s flow and functioning.
LOW-FI Prototype: This part describes the app and presents ideas by developing the task-flow, task-steps, and interaction dialog designs. The very first prototype was designed in this section.
Wireframe
MEDIUM-FI Prototype: Usability testing, evaluation method, testing, collecting end-user feedback, and redesign based on feedback have been done for this step:
Interview: The interview was conducted with 5 kids. The designer asked questions about the uses of VR/AR technology, their challenges, their requests for an app for a VR museum, and their interest in historical places and traditional clothes.
Observations: This subject was so exciting for them. The designer did observations on the school or children’s center (after she get allowed from parents and the manager of these centers). She was cautious not to get too close, so all observations were done from at least 10 ft away either, and in some cases, teachers/parents helped kids. Additionally, they tried this mockup while the designer explained how it works for them and they wore the VR headset.
HIGH-FI Prototype: After collecting all of the primary and secondary research, it was time to organize the findings. The designer improved the prototypes and finalized a high-fidelity prototype design in this part.
How does Chilly Mo work?
On the first screen by clicking on the Visit Gallery button users go to the next step. They can select VR or AR environment on the second screen. Adding their personal info and photo (which will use on the VR video and last picture) are on the Login screen. Then users select a gallery (with a brief explanation) and collections and traditional clothes on three pages respectively. Users are dressed in costumes and enter the VR/AR environment. They participate in a selected party (historical places) for around 10 minutes. The last page shows a picture from users while they wear traditional clothes and they can select print and share this one.