Emphasize

Express

Physical Fabrication

Project Paragraph

Growth Paragraph

Iteration

This project was done in collaboration with the Acton Discovery Museum. We were given the task of re-designing some of their current under performing exhibits. My group worked on mirrors and reflection based exhibit aimed at younger kids. After an initial observation of the exhibit we came to the conclusion that it was visually uninteresting when compared to surrounding exhibits, and lacked anything to maintain a users interest. My contribution to the mirrors exhibit re-design is an adjustable kaleidoscopic mirror in the form of a flower. This is meant as a scale model for a potentially larger exhibit mounted on or near the current exhibit table. By interacting with this through rotating part of the base platform, the mirrors fold up creating a sharper angle of reflection leading to the object in front of the exhibit to be mirrored more frequently.

Going into this project I wasn't sure on the direction I should take given how open or deliverables were. So I settled on something that served as both an opportunity to further familiarize myself with creating for a client, as well as a chance to practice my prototyping and fabrication skills more. The prototype I spent the majority of this studio developing gave me constant opportunities to deepen my understanding of simple mechanisms, while forcing me to think creatively about how I construct my prototype due to the two dimensional constraint of the laser cutter. While working with this client was overall a great experience, there were several major issues with the existing exhibit like its location within the room that inhibited the efficacy of our prototypes and user testing. Regardless of this however, the final prototypes created by my group were received well, and may be used to help further develop the exhibit.