Express

Concept Development

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Mag Maze is a museum exhibit designed for the Discovery Museum. In the early stages of our collaboration with the Discovery Museum, it became clear that they were looking for an exhibit that was an introduction to magnets, replacing their Falling Magnets exhibit, to make clear the principles for their other magnet exhibits. Mag Maze was designed with this in mind, making a maze that uses Active Prolonged Engagement (APE) to teach the basics of how magnets interact. Using control pucks, kids can manipulate the magnets including their polarity and other fundamental properties. This hands-on method allows children to learn about the behavior of magnets, including their polarity and other fundamental properties.

I think this studio started off pretty well. I liked working with the design museum to design an exhibit and I was really excited at the start of the studio and felt it was good that we got an early start on getting into groups and starting on our exhibits. The first week went really well. We did a lot of great research on magnets and APE but then came the playtest, and I think that screwed us up a little. Up to that point, I was excited about where our project was heading with a magnetic sculpture-type thing that would emphasize APE and interactive play. The playtest however made it so we decided to make a maze. Making the maze itself at a larger scale ended up taking a really long time due to the size of our plywood and laser cutter, and by the time we finished that, there wasn't time for anything else. In making the maze, we lost a lot of the creative elements and researched-backed design that we had previously. Besides drafting and making blueprints, I'm not sure if I picked up any new skills.

Digital Fabrication