Nelson Event: Final Wayfinding

kanderson_sculpure_spotting

For my wayfinding system for the Ferment event, I chose to create a theme centered around Birds and bird watching.

The catch though, is that the Nelson Atkins Birds are the guides that help the child navigate through the garden and discover the highlighted sculptures and events.

I thought this to be the most appropriate direction to go in for the event for several reasons. Given the nature theme of the event, having friendly wildlife characters to help narrate appeal to the children. Also, birds seem to be a logical character to choose to introduce the tree-like Dendroid.


Visually, these birds are brightly colored, to match with the map, and their nests are a photo collage of each sculpture. Because of this, the children will be able to make the visual connection between the birds on their wayfinding map, and the sculptures they represent.

First and foremost of the event materials is the Sculpture spotting map with events page. The inside spread contains the map, and the corresponding schedule with events is located on the back page.

The visual style of this is very geometric, with bright colors and a combination of photography and flat vector shapes. Not only are the bright colors visually stimulating to children, but I feel like they also capture the bright, playful feel of a summer day in a garden. Think popcicles.

Back to the map spread though. This is where the magic starts to happen. along side the map, are the Nelson birds! They give the children easy-to-read clues as to where to find the sculptures. The clues are easy enough that younger children can read them, but not so simple that they’re off-putting to the older kids.

Upon arriving at each of the featured sculptures, the child will be presented with their OWN nelson bird. The birds have the name and artist of their corresponding sculpture, but also a spot for the child to give their bird its own name. This component of the materials bridges the map to the sculptures.

Nelson Event: Saturday Testing. Children! :)

This is what I had on Friday: It was vertical, and there were hierarchy problems, some issues with the clarity of the maps, and the back needed some serious help.

Based on the feedback that I got on Friday, this is the map that I presented the kids with on the Saturday expedition. I focused on making the map the best it could be, and left the events page to be edited later ( since the kids wouldn't be using it at all).


On the positive note, the map was pretty easy to follow, and the verbal clues helped with the navigation once the kids were in the general vicinity of the sculpture.
But one thing that the children seemed to have a problem with was orienting themselves with the map. They wanted to be able to easily turn the map so that it faced whatever direction they were wandering in. This seems like an easy enough fix.

They were also bothered by the fact that they didn’t have anything to put their birds in. And I don’t mean the craft tree, I mean something like a pocket or envelope. And while parents might help with carrying things, this parent did not. Holding the map and the cards was a bit too much.
Engagement was the biggest problem that I ran into. Once the kids came to the sculptures, they got their bird card...and that was it. There’s not enough education happening, and not a lot of interaction. The cards are were this change needs to happen, and these need to give the kids some reason to reflect.
Lastly, it was a board. It shouldn’t be a board.



To combat the issues there, I gave in and made the piece fold-able. There is the title page, center page with the map and birds with the clues, and the back is the event listing. I've simplified the map a bit more and cut the top of the map off; who really needs to go up there anyway? There was a pocket function now, but I will be moving in the direction of the envelope (or the poor birdies will fall out). Now I need to focus on the cards, while finessing the map paper for Friday!

Nelson Event: Peer User Testing

My new map and back are, if I'm allowed to say, very exciting! Or at least, I am excited about them, I'm enjoying the next, even more geometric design that I'm basing everything off of. After the user testing though, there are a lot of things I still need to work on. For one, I spent so much time on the map, that I need to bring the cards up to snuff now too. I'm also going to experiment with different layouts of the map, and a few new sizes.
This current map is 24 by 13.3, which I thought, on really thick paper, might be able to hold up. It would save with the folding frustration, and give the kids something big to work with. But, it has been suggested that I have it fold. I will consider this, but I'm not sold on it yet.



IAN's EVALUATION:

VI'S EVALUATION:
There was some more text on the back of Vi's, talking about adding more pathways, and the contrast of the map being low in black and white.

Nelson Event: First Round Refinements

More Birds! Everything is beginning to assimilate. Here are my first birds that got vectored, with their nests made of images of the sculptures. I also tried beginning to place them into their card formats, with either the trading card style or the cut out. It's all pretty rough still.



And as for the map, it's got a lot of work ahead of it. I need to keep everything from conforming to that odd slope shape, among other things. On the back of this would be the event listings, but I haven't designed those yet!

Nelson Event: Going Digital

So, these are the initial illustrations for the Nelson-Atkins birds and their sculpture nests. There are some readability issues with the nests, and for several of them it is difficult to make the connection that they are based off of the highlighted sculptures.

Map Iterations:


I'm going to continue in a more digital, geometric approach from this point forward. One thing that I thought was interesting was this map, which uses the photographs in combination with the bring colors. This is something else that I would like to explore, because I think that the combination of the photos and the bold, flat shapes can turn into something really exciting.

Some other things I messed around with, but will not be using:

Nelson Event: Initial Brainstorming

The event direction that I went along with was a theme of bird watching, but with a twist. The birds are the ones searching (with the children), so it is instead called "sculpture spotting."
Birds would direct you on the map towards the highlighted sculptures, and then once the kid discovers them, is rewarded with a card with information about the sculpture on it.

A couple of map variations, one with bird tracks and the other with a bird narrating the journey. I also played with different ways of indicating the sculptures on the maps, like with nests with eggs (a little too eastery though) or drawn icons of the sculptures.


And here were my rough (very, very rough) ideas for the birds that they would receive. I'm not sure if I want them to be trading cards or something that you can cut out and put in the craft tree that the kids have the option of making at the event. If they are trading cards, then after the event the become a little useless. If they're pieces for the tree though, it will last once they take the tree home, but what if they don't make a tree? Questions, questions.
Some birds: