Challenge

The Edward M. Kennedy Institute (EMKI) approached Intersection (then, Control Group) as a technology and design partner. They challenged us to design and develop a tech solution that would facilitate their mission: to educate, invigorate, and inspire the next generation of citizens and leaders to engage in civic life. The Institute was envisioned to be a fully interactive experience where each visitor could interact with exhibits and one another to play games, cast votes, and debate, thereby learning what it feels like to “be a Senator for a day.” 

The Institute was to feature two distinct experiences: a “Chamber,” where students can experience a fully immersive senate experience, and a “Gallery,” where visitors can learn about the Senate at their own pace via 16 interactive exhibits. Upon arrival to the Institute, each visitor would be given a Nexus 7 tablet, with which they’d use to engage with each interactive exhibit.

My Role

As a UX designer for the Gallery experience, and then later as UX Lead, my role was to create an intuitive interaction model that compelled users to engage with each exhibit, but also allowed engagement with each other for exhibits that featured multi-player interactive games. How could we create an interaction model that supported these goals, but that was also easy to learn and feel easy to use for a wide audience?

I started this process with sketching and user testing. Some promising early ideas, such as using the day’s agenda to drive navigation, fell short during user testing. We learned that limiting options in navigation was key to engagement; the more our interaction model could guide the experience, the better. This led our team to land on a navigation experience that mirrored the physical layout of the Gallery instead, which gently nudged users to explore the museum in exhibit order, but didn’t prevent from exploration.

Each exhibit featured a full screen tablet experience in a carousel-style format. Swiping side to side navigated through each exhibit, while scrolling down allowed a deeper dive into exhibit content. Using this interaction model, we gave users the freedom to explore exhibits at their own pace, and in whichever order they pleased. We also successfully introduced Badges—a way to gamify the exhibit experience—in a mid-cycle, Google-design-sprint style design spike. 

While many exhibits featured simple “Learn More” content or image galleries, some exhibits featured unique, multiplayer gameplay mechanics that required novel interaction models. One example of a multi-player exhibit is “How A Bill Becomes A Law.” In this experience, players have to work together to debate and compromise on a fictional bill in order to pass it into law. 

The experience begins with visitors approaching a 60’ projected display and voluntarily opting into gameplay. Once a critical mass—a “quorum”— is established, gameplay begins. The Wall display walks the group through the creation of a fictional bill, while each visitors’ Tablet displays individual voting mechanisms. As the experience proceeds, players converse and compromise with one another and use their tablets to cast votes and learn more about the process. All tablet and wall content are coordinated in real time, creating a complementary, multi-device gaming experience.

In the first year alone, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute hosted over 10,000 students. It’s garnered numerous awards and recognition, such as the 2017 TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence, in recognition of consistently receiving positive feedback and reviews from visitors. The Institute even received praise from President Obama at the ribbon-cutting ceremony in March 2015.