UXR Case Study: Virtual Museum
Summary
🏛️ During the pandemic, physical museum visits were impossible, leaving a void for both the museum and the public.
🎮 Our goal: Create an engaging, digital experience that preserves the magic of museum visits.
Key Insights
😷 Context
The pandemic made traditional museum visits impossible.
🎭 Challenge
Digital museum experiences were dull and failed to capture the feeling of exploration.
🌐 Solution
A colorful, RPG-style game built with RPG Maker, where visitors navigate a digital world, interact with iconic figures like Jane Goodall, and access engaging content linked to the museum’s resources.
✨ Impact
Users found the experience immersive and fun, leading to increased engagement with the museum’s digital content.
Design Process
1️⃣ Understanding the Need
The museum wanted to keep the public engaged during lockdowns while enhancing their digital presence.
2️⃣ User Research
Explored what makes physical museum visits memorable and how to translate that digitally.
3️⃣ Concept Development
Proposed an RPG-inspired adventure, turning the digital museum experience into a lively, explorable world.
4️⃣ Prototype & Testing
Built a prototype in RPG Maker and tested it for engagement and usability.
5️⃣ Final Implementation
Launched a vibrant, interactive game with positive feedback on the immersive experience.
Unique Elements
🌍 RPG Adventure:
Users could walk around a colorful, Zelda-like world, discover digital exhibits, and engage with multimedia content.
🎶 Atmosphere:
Calming, immersive music and bright visuals created a joyful experience that felt less like a website and more like an adventure.
Below, we dive deeper into the design journey and the evidence-based strategies we developed to tackle this unique challenge.
Short Description
Our project seeks to identify evidence-based solutions to help museums better educate middle-school students, in an online environment.
Project Description
The purpose of this study is to understand the challenges and successes of museum-based school trips, both in person and virtually, for middle school students and teachers.
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to affect in-person services and spaces (like museums), it is important for Ingenium to understand how they can offer the same school group experience that is usually experienced in-person, online.
Findings will help inform the development of new virtual education programs for middle school students and teachers. The study can be defined by the following research question:
“Among middle school students, how does self-guided exploration play a role in online and in-person museum experiences?”
Within the context of our research question, we are interested in learning about self-guided museum experiences both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Below you can view a presentation we prepared for Ingenium.
By following this link and unzipping the files to your desktop, you can try a prototype of the virtual museum.
Currently the prototype only works on Windows. If you cannot unzip the files, you can download 7Zip here or Winzip here. Below is an overview of the prototype, in action.