What is this project about?
My team was tasked to select a period from the history of design or technology to use to design a museum exhibit. Using this theme as a guide, we will find relevant, technologically advanced, and engaging activities that give visitors a sense of embodied participation in the exhibit and help them learn about the historical period via engagement and immersion. We also needed to include three different touch points that will interact with participants and keep them engaged in the experience. Additionally, we created an interactive web experience for one of the touch points. We had decided we would do the prohibition as the theme for this museum.

How did we understand the time period and our users?
We had begun this project by completing secondary research in order to fully grasp what had caused the prohibition, what events were taking place during this time, and how smugglers had smuggled the alcohol. We had then created a cultural probe consisting of many creative prompts for people in the user group (18+ or any younger with a parent) to complete. The insights from this probe had guided our choices for what touch points we wanted to include.

What activities did we complete to gather data?
My team and I had completed the cultural probe, an affinity diagram, multiple journey maps after iteration, competitive analysis, and concept testing. These were all very beneficial in gathering data to make our museum experience as engaging as possible.

What was the end result?
The museum would be two different rooms. Before the users would walk into the room, they would scan their phone on a barcode in the check-in area, and would be given a persona to act as for their time being a 'smuggler'. They would enter the theatre, where they will take their seat and get ready to act as a smuggler while watching the screen. This room will tackle the 5 senses to allow full immersion. As for touch, there will be haptics, mist, and the motion chairs deployed throughout the experience. For sight, having the fully interactive 4D movie. For sound, audio sounds, story narration, and music.The users will smell scents that immerse the users into the scene.Then for taste, users will drink a free mock-tail in the speakeasy, the next room. The chairs will have guns attached to them, as the screen will be interactive and you shoot at the smugglers trying to steal your alcohol while on the run. Then users will leave the room and enter the speakeasy, called "The Playground", using the web experience which allows them to order and customize their own mock-tail.

What were my contributions?
In this project I had helped create as well as conducted a cultural probe. I had also created an affinity diagram from our cultural probe findings, ideated for our project idea/individual exhibit, and did secondary research in order to understand this historical event.