Nanoland Exhibit
Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)
Team:
Christy Peterson, copywriting
My roles:
research, conducting scientist interviews, concept development, client communication, experience design, content development, editing, and curation, graphic production, concept consistency and alignment
How do you get a kids excited about nanotechnology — a field in which nothing can be seen with the human eye?
Electron microscope manufacturer FEI partnered with OMSI to create an exhibit that would excite visitors about this world their machines allowed scientists to explore. Rather than simply list facts about these complex microscopes, OMSI hired our team to create a participatory and immersive way to approach the topic.
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We decided the best way to get visitors excited about nanotechnology was to invite them into this wonderful and bizarre world. Everyone who entered the exhibit had to imaginatively "shrink down" in order to walk through the human body, a geothermal pool, and a metal alloy at nano scale. In each landscape, visitors accomplished tasks based on information gathered from scientists using FEI's microscopes.
This was a hugely collaborative, interdisciplinary process. Our small team did everything from interviewing scientists, to developing the concept for the exhibit, to delivering floor plans and drawings to the OMSI fabrication team. See the Nanoland Case Study to learn more about the process.
