Nanoland Exhibition

How do you get audiences excited about a scientific field
in which nothing can be seen with the human eye? How do you
activate an underused space and build capacity within an in-house team?

Client:

Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)

Team:

Kelsey Snook, creative lead

Laurence Sarrazin, 3D design

Will Bryant, illustration

Christy Peterson, copywriting

My roles:

Experience design, design research, discovery artifacts, concept development, client presentations, content development, editing, graphic production

Electron microscope manufacturer FEI partnered with OMSI to create an exhibit that would excite visitors about the nano-world their machines allowed scientists to explore. OMSI hired our team to create a participatory and immersive way to approach nanotechnology. The museum had its own outcomes for the project — they had an underused space they wanted to activate and wanted help stretching their team's capacity to create temporary, in-house exhibits.

After extensive research, interviews, spatial mapping exercises, behavioral observations, prototyping, and user testing, Nanoland was born.

Our team developed an accessible narrative with participatory moments that guests loved sharing on social media. The once defunct space saw a dramatic increase in foot traffic and stay time. OMSI's team finished the project with new tools for thinking beyond museum defaults and built confidence in their ability to create low-cost, crafty installations.

THE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

What is an electron microscope? How does it work? This was our first task in understanding. We pored through the literature to try to grasp the workings of these complex machines.

We met with experts in the field and asked them to explain how they used nanotechnology. These scientists were working in a variety of applications — medicine, technology, fabrics, materials, biology.

They showed us images from electron microscopes that helped them infer what was happening at the nano level.

After all the research, my brain usually felt like this. These scientists were speaking another language. How could we communicate their highly technical work to a broader audience?

I had to trust the process, wading through confusion, complexity, and ambiguity in order to move from not knowing to knowing.

I saw my ignorance about nanotechnology as an asset. It allowed me to follow my curiosity and be open to results.

I looked for patterns, commonalities, and overlap. I listened again to our interviews and latched onto the level of excitement in the voices of our interviewees. Our team followed that insight to develop a story and a narrative arc.

We decided to invite our visitors to shrink down to the nano-scale and enter into Nanoland.

We created signage at entry points to invite visitors into the tiny, tiny world of nano.

Once inside nanoland, guests could explore the worlds of the scientists we interviewed. We annotated the images they used in their work and presented imaginative quotes from when they were excitedly talking about their work.

One of the trickiest parts of the exhibit was finding the sweet spot between factual knowledge and imaginitive/intuitive knowledge. We worked closely with our scientists to make sure the metaphors we were using accurately represented what was happening in the real nano-world.

We looked at the exhibit space and analyzed behaviors and traffic flow. We came up with a pacing for the different sections of the exhibit.

Our 3-D designer started fabricating the nano-worlds. Our graphic designer created patterns for each world. Our copywriter developed a playful tone for the behavior we invited visitors to engage in while walking through each world.