SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY · PROCESS TRANSFORMATION

Redesigned the development process, increasing visitor engagement 300%.

Q?rius was an ambitious attempt to turn the traditional museum experience inside out: visitors could handle real specimens, interact with scientists and explore the museum’s research for themselves.

But after launch, the activities weren’t producing the level of engagement the museum had envisioned. Developing new ones could take months, with little visitor input along the way. I joined the museum as an Experience Design Consultant to help change that.

The challenge

Creating an activity brought together scientists, educators, designers, fabricators, evaluators and volunteers. Ideas passed through many hands, but visitors often entered the process late. By then, teams could have invested significant time trying to make an idea work without knowing whether it actually would.

What I did

I redesigned the process around earlier experimentation and real visitor behavior.

Teams began rapidly prototyping ideas, testing them with visitors and using what they learned to decide what to develop, change or abandon. Weak ideas could fail early; promising ones got better through iteration.

I created the structure to make that work across a complex group of stakeholders, including a visual development process, shared measures of success, project briefs and assessment tools. Then I worked alongside teams to put the new approach into practice.

The result

300% INCREASE IN VISITOR ENGAGEMENT
Redesigned activities outperformed the originals across every measure assessed, including up to a 300% increase in the time visitors spent engaging with them.

DRAMATICALLY FASTER DEVELOPMENT
Testing earlier reduced time spent trying to rescue ideas that weren’t working and helped stronger ideas reach the museum floor faster.

AN APPROACH WORTH SHARING
The process and tools were later shared at the American Alliance of Museums annual conference and used as the foundation for a Harvard Extension School course.

FROM MUSEUM FLOOR TO GLOBAL AUDIENCE
Outbreak, an epidemiology experience I developed for Q?rius, was later adapted into a digital experience and shared globally.

“Through your creativity, tenacity and commitment to great visitor experience, you have inspired us and challenged us to work harder, think bigger, and appreciate the value of good design in everything we do. You have left your signature on some of the museum’s most successful activities and programs and helped us communicate our work more clearly than we ever could have without you.”

Colleen Popson · Manager, Experience Design
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History