Product Workshop: Chicago Childrens Museum

Instructor

Martin Thaler

Description
The objective of this 15-week workshop is to strengthen and develop a student’s design abilities by designing a children’s exhibit for the Chicago Children’s Museum. “Learning through Play” offers a student an opportunity to base his/her work on real world constraints, learn from museum exhibit developers, enjoy the process of learning through doing, and have his/her work evaluated on many levels. Exceptional work has the potential to become a Chicago Children’s Museum exhibit within a 1,500 square foot exhibit space at the museum. The museum will be relocated to Grant Park and design solutions may be guided by preliminary planning for the new building.

Process
A structured design process will emphasize the use of prototypes of all kinds to represent the visitor experience. These may take the form of scale and full-scale mock-ups, paper mock-ups, digital interfaces, or videos appropriate for expressing concept intent to kids, parents, developers, others in the workshop and in the design community. Promising ideas will be further developed into more refined concepts, and ultimately a final exhibit design. Field visits may include: Museum of Science and Industry, The Field Museum, Kohl Children’s Museum, and perhaps The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and Design Craftsmen in Midland, Michigan, time permitting.

Format & Grading

Format
Depending on the size of the class, students will work individually or in small teams. This class meets on Mondays for group and/or individual reviews, presentations, and critiques. There will be weekly assignments that focus and guide the student on the appropriate work to be accomplished at each stage of the design process. Deliverables will include, sketches, concept drawings, various scale mock-ups, 3D renderings, and scenarios. Students are expected to collaborate, employ, and gain new skills in research and prototyping, and to contribute to a healthy and positive critique of fellow students’ work along the way.

Grading
Evaluation will focus on the quality of work and individual progress. Quality work will be highly tangible, conceptually strong, clearly organized, and visually well presented. This applies even though early work will be rough and later work, more refined. In keeping with the emphasis on design visualization and prototyping, students should focus on creating weekly visuals for analyzing and representing his/her thinking and ideas.

Schedule by Week
1 Introduction
2 Research at Chicago Children’s Museum
3 Project definition
5 Initial concept review
6-9 Second generation prototypes, user testing, and design development
7 Mid-point review
10-14 Detailed design refinement and vision of visitor experience
15 Final presentation