United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum
With Paralympians and Olympians sharing equal billing, the Museum is an inclusive experience through its content and design, its heroes and visitors, its architecture and, of course, its interactives.
The visitor participates at one of six interactive experiences, learning about a particular skill important to a wide number of Olympic and Paralympic sports and then puts that skill into practice via a short training exercise.
The Challenge
How to create interactive challenges that blend the digital and the physical, challenge the elite as well as novices and ultimately allow all visitors to participate and learn through play in a safe and engaging museum environment?
United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum Video
Photo Credits: CREO Industrial Arts & Nic Lehoux
User testing the Skeleton game. Working with various groups, we were able to gain a diversity of opinion on many factors of gameplay and create authentic experiences for all.
Photo Credits: CREO Industrial Arts & Nic Lehoux
The Skeleton interactive being tested at final installation on site, Gallery 4 at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
Design & Execution
Whatever the visitor’s method of interaction, how to create a consistent language, visually and semantically? For visitors who cannot control a touchscreen, how to offer intuitive ways to navigate content? How do visitors know where the keypad will be? When a visitor enters the Museum with a need for a lower-sensory experience, how to inclusively offer toned-down content?
If a visitor can’t navigate an experience visually, how to offer an equivalent experience via sound and touch? For visitors who cannot hear content, how to design rich experiences? Where screens are a variety of formats and heights, how to ensure the user interface is always accessible, and content always visible to all?
The team facilitated seamless personalization using RFID and personalized registration. Up front, visitors determine the services that they will find most useful throughout their visit and those settings become their digital fingerprint throughout, carried on their RFID profile and recognized instantly, from a distance, on any media or interactive interface they encounter.
Co-design and user-testing was embedded throughout, ensuring the design met all needs and no decisions were made in isolation of other inputs.
Photo Credits: CREO Industrial Arts & Nic Lehoux
Gallery 4 at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
Photo Credits: CREO Industrial Arts & Nic Lehoux
The Speed Training running track, Gallery 4 at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
Photo Credits: CREO Industrial Arts & Nic Lehoux
Slideshow
United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum
User testing the Skeleton game. Working with various groups, we were able to gain a diversity of opinion on many factors of gameplay and create authentic experiences for all.
The Skeleton interactive being tested at final installation on site, Gallery 4 at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
Gallery 4 at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum.
The Speed Training running track, Gallery 4 at the United States Olympic & Paralympic Museum.