How a Children’s Museum is Using XR to Expand its Footprint
Recently, I was doing some pro bono consulting for a nonprofit children’s museum. They’re trying to figure out how to utilize the best possible augmented reality experiences throughout their exhibits.
Right off the bat, I had to praise the museum’s executive director for having the foresight to begin exploring AR experiences at this stage of the XR’s development! He knows that XR is hitting the mainstream in big ways, and that he wants his museum to be on the cutting edge.
Here are a few of the key questions we discussed (that most organizations will also have to grapple with as they pursue XR experiences):
- Do you want to provide XR headsets or ask everyone to use their smartphones?
- Will they be able to create a station where an attendant can help people with headsets?
- Is there good cell phone reception for most major carriers? Is there high quality internet? Will the internet be free to all visitors and easy to access (without getting congested)?
- What are the specific learning objectives for the attraction? Are they a gimmick, or legitimately enhancing the experience?
These may seem obvious as you read them, but in my experience, when most people approach an XR experience, they head straight toward the coolest, flashiest, and most expensive project they can afford.
But trust me: that’s not the path toward the most effective XR experiences, or the way to ensure that your XR experiences will make your business real revenue.
Let’s deep dive into some of these questions so you can understand why it is important to go through and answer these questions before diving into creating an XR experience:
Headsets vs. Smartphones
Buying headsets is a huge upfront cost: can you afford them? Will you charge extra for this experience to offset this cost? Are you ready to replace headsets as they break, or the attraction gains traction? How long until they need to be replaced?
If the exhibit only has a few headsets, this might cause a “traffic jam” and clog up the flow at the museum. It will also create scarcity, which means the experience will be more exclusive. And when it’s exclusive, it has to be very worth the time or money to ensure expectations are met.
Headsets need to be recharged after a few hours of usage, and disinfected and/or cleaned regularly. All this has to be factored into the amount of headsets you purchase, how the headsets are managed and maintained, what kind of physical footprint they require, and the personnel that you dispatch in so that you can get maximum usage out of each.
If you’re leaning toward a smartphone experience, do you expect the majority of your visitors will have the latest smartphones that can run all of the XR experiences? Will they need to download a native app (from the App Store or Play Store), or access the experience on the web?
(I put together a guide to help you decide if your smartphone AR experience should be web-based or in a native app — check it out here)
Or, do you want to provide tablets? You get more screen to work with, and they’re much cheaper than headsets. But, you run into the same kind of traffic jam that headsets cause, but with much less immersion to make it worth it.
Headset troubleshooting stations
I was very explicit about this with the executive director that I was working with: If the museum isn’t able to have a full-time employee to guide kids through how to use an AR headset and protect the headsets from getting damaged, then there is no point in going for an extremely immersive experience.
Headsets aren’t common enough that you can expect everyone to use them without help. Headsets are expensive and too fragile to let everyone use without guidance and supervision, particularly at a kid’s museum.
If you’re not able to account for this with timing, flow, personnel, and physical footprint, then you’re not set up for an immersive headset experience.
Internet Accessibility, Speed and Capacity
Have you ever been in the depths of Target, finally at the bottom of your (wife’s) list, holding your phone in the air like a crazy person trying to Google “what in the world is bouillon?”
No? Just me…?
If an AR experience is going to be smartphone-based, then a strong, reliable data connection is absolutely critical.
This will take thorough testing in every area remotely connected to the AR experience — on every major carrier. Even if folks have a good connection, they still might want to get onto wifi and not use up their data plan depending on their cell plan, too. You’ll need to be sure your wifi can handle that kind of traffic and has excellent blanket coverage.
Specific Learning Objectives
None of the other questions will matter much if you can’t answer this one: why you are creating the XR experience?
Is it to teach kids about “stop, drop and roll,” to crawl if there is a fire, to teach them about dinosaurs?
How will it benefit from an immersive experience? Does it need to be more memorable so they can lock it into long term memory? Does it need to be more thrilling so they understand the importance? Does it need to be more complex so they can fully understand what’s going on? Does it need to be creative and engaging so you can capture their imagination and attention?
Once you know what you are trying to teach and why it’s important, you can start to be creative with the “how.” Within the boundary lines we discussed above, you can let your creativity loose and utilize the most impressive abilities AR has to offer to create something memorable, engaging, and effective!
Working with the director of the museum was extremely fun! I loved brainstorming ideas with him and ensuring that he understood what options he had to choose from and why.
These realistic constraints actually increase creativity — they don’t hamper it. When you know the boundary lines, it cuts down your options from infinite (and overwhelming) to finite (and understandable).
Toward the end of the meeting, he put the cherry on top of the experience for me by saying this about our time together:
“In my 20 years of experience, I’ve never thought of expanding the museum footprint in this way… and my brain exploded.”
This made my day. He caught the vision!
He realized that the museum he loves isn’t confined to just a physical space anymore. He doesn’t have to be limited by square footage, construction debris, and building permits.
XR will completely change a kid’s experience at this museum — and it’s so much better than just a virtual tour of a physical museum from your couch at home.
Picture a brand new exhibit teaching kids about firefighters and home fire safety. Instead of elaborate statues frozen in time, or screens auto-playing videos on a loop, it’s now a complete XR experience. Kids crawl through a hallway with AR smoke above them. They see firefighters outside the window of the room they’re standing in, and they get doused with “water” as the hose bursts through the window. They go on a virtual ride through the streets at top speed in the fire truck with the sirens blaring. Then to top it all off, they become the firefighters, running through the house with their hose, ax, and heads-up-display in their peripheral vision.
That’s pretty sweet.
But it doesn’t stop there.
Most museum experiences are done when you head home. But now, XR can expand the experience even further. What if the museum was putting out monthly or weekly XR experiences for their members that build on their experience in the building?
At the museum, kids learned about crawling underneath smoke.
A week later at home, those kids get access to a brand new AR experience teaching them how to “PASS” (pull, aim, squeeze, and sweep) with a fire extinguisher. They see a 3D model of a fire extinguisher in front of them, and they see a quick animation of pulling the pin, aiming the nozzle, then squeezing the handle so the extinguisher releases its chemicals, and then sweeping the nozzle at the base of the fire. So powerful, so fun, and in many ways so easy!
A week later, they get access to another AR experience that teaches how smoke detectors work and that they should be checked regularly. It could be a visual effect that makes a room smokey — in one scenario the smoke detector goes off, and then the whole family is able to get out of the house with plenty of time to spare. In a different scenario, they’re able to see the danger of a detector without batteries.
Hopefully you’re seeing the power of these immersive experiences! Utilizing the exciting, immersive, compelling power of XR experiences, you can capture people’s imagination and teach them in ways that they will internalize and remember.
And those XR experiences will not only keep your audience engaged at home — they’ll encourage repeat visits to the physical museum, since the most immersive experiences are there!
This is a clear path toward higher membership price tiers, and even more financial sponsorship opportunities with companies (even potentially XR companies to build their own brand recognition).
Now if you’re still here, and you don’t run a museum… you’re clearly able to see that none of this is exclusive to museums! This is for all sorts of businesses.
Take indoor trampoline parks as an example. How can you make a membership more meaningful and engaging? 3D tutorials on the best flips. Fire underneath the balance beam. A virtual race with a ninja through the obstacle course… with the occasional ninja star thrown at your face.
XR will unleash untold amounts of creativity into the world. Don’t you want your business to be at the forefront of that gold rush?
Do you need further guidance on how to navigate XR for your business? DM me on LinkedIn and we can chat!
