Encounters

Design Context

In our second semester as Formative Education PhD students at Boston College, we enrolled in a proseminar titled Design of Formative Experience with Prof. Marina Bers. In this course, we explored the concept of formative experiences and the role that design and innovation can play in this process.

This course culminated in a semester-long class project in which we were tasked with creating a “Museum of Formation,” a hands-on opportunity to take the role of a designer and apply the design process. Each small group chose to develop a prototype for an exhibit related to a powerful idea of formation. We (Abby and Carina) selected the theme “Encounters.”

What do we mean by "encounters?"

Encounters make up the fabric of our daily lives. From ordinary moments of human interaction, to inspiration sparked by the aesthetic, to immersion into the natural world, encounters are educative forces capable of shaping us irrevocably. These experiences shift our perspectives, giving us new lenses with which to see the world.

We situated our understanding of encounters within the theoretical framework of two twentieth-century German philosophers, Martin Buber and Hans-Georg Gadamer.

We looked to Buber’s description of the I-Thou and I-It relationships as we sought to explore the role of technology in facilitating our interactions. For Gadamer, encounters can leave us feeling “pulled up short,” challenging our habitual perspectives and assumptions, leaving us with a deeper understanding of ourselves and the surrounding world. These insights guided our design process for our exhibit.

The design process applied in developing this exhibit

Goals & Intentions

We wanted to do more than create an exhibit about encounters; rather, we wanted to design an experience that elicited the feelings that encounters stir up.

Our hope was that through navigating the multiple stations, interactive media, and tactile objects that we designed, visitors would:

Cultivate wonder and curiosity about the role of encounters in their lives
Expand their awareness of the ways encounters reorder and reshape their perspectives
Reflect upon moments of meaningful encounter within their personal histories

Exhibit Components

Our exhibit was composed of a series of interactive stations, each inviting the visitor to encounter encounters (ha!) from different vantage points.

Encounters with the Self

How do we make sense of what we learn as the result of our encounters? When we return to ourselves, what is it that we find?

We started and ended our exhibit with an invitation to literally reflect upon oneself in the mirror, as a visual reminder of the reshaping and reordering of the self that comes from our encounters with the other.

Encountering with Our Senses

See, hear, touch, taste, smell. Encounters activate each one of our senses. But what happens when we take one away? At this station, visitors donned a blindfold as they reached into each of the boxes, using their other senses to determine the miniaturized real-world objects they contained.

Encounters with Others

By inviting visitors to contribute to an “exquisite corpse”-style drawing, our intention was to showcase “encounter” as a mutual act – a give and take, a place where learning and teaching exist in unison – as they generated a collaborative composition.

Encounters with Wonder

When was the last time you experienced wonder? Oftentimes, encounters with nature enable us to tap into the sensations of wonder and awe. How and when do we access these emotions in our daily lives?

We invited visitors to experience views from windows around the world through interaction with the website WindowSwap. We wanted to transport our visitors to a cozy corner where they could gaze out a window, despite our actual location in a hallway of an academic building. To promote this immersion, we sewed cushy pillows and transformed our iPads into windows.

Tracing Our Encounters

Through our talk-back wall, we encouraged visitors to contribute their own experiences to a collective understanding of the notion of encounter.

Visitors’ contributions to our talk-back wall made visible the connections they were making to their own lives as they engaged with our exhibit.

Our Exhibit in Use

Our Collaborative Process

In coming to this work, we (Abby and Carina) were both familiar with “doing” design work. Little did we know we had so much to learn from each other! Abby’s background is at the intersection of technology, STEM, and PreK-2 education. She came to this work excited to utilize her fabrication skills and get building! Carina’s background is in art museum education, gallery teaching, and the design of intergenerational public programs. She was excited to expand her knowledge of digital fabrication in order to explore her interest in exhibition design.

As we worked together, we shared our knowledge and developed new skills. Abby learned from Carina about making ideas legible within the context of a museum. Carina learned from Abby about using technology to facilitate creativity through an iterative design process. Together, we produced a prototype that stretched us as designers and strengthened our understanding of formation.

What We Learned About...

Design

Designing for Different Needs and Interests.

Inviting visitors to engage in multiple ways allows them to "choose their own adventure" and seek what speaks to them.
We noticed that by balancing written text with more interactive elements, visitors either started with our written interpretation and before interacting (or not) with each station or they started with the interaction before reading our interpretation (or not).

Designing for Short- and Long-Term Engagement.

We knew that in museums, visitor duration in exhibits varies widely, spanning seconds to hours. In our design, we wanted to accommodate both extremes.
With our free-form stations, we tried to provide just-enough structure to have a meaningful experience with our exhibit while still enabling visitor spontaneity.

Collaboration

Our Own Encountering

Our ideas, and eventually our designs, evolved with each conversation.
We didn’t start with the idea of encounters, but it gradually emerged through our encounters with each other and with the tools, ideas, and materials we were experimenting with during our ideation process.

Our Formation Through Prototyping

Since our goal was to share a work-in-progress rather than a finished product, we were freed to focus on our own learning goals and the way in which we wanted to work together.
We prioritized keeping our collaboration fun by incorporating skills that already interested us, whether sewing or 3D printing, into our design.
We framed challenges as stepping stones toward our next iterations which helped us stay flexible and maintain a learner's (rather than expert's) mindset.

Next Steps: Carrying the Design Cycle Forward

Testing & Improving

Our exhibition was presented as a prototype and pilot experience.

If given the opportunity to elicit feedback from our participants to improve our design, we would ask the following:

Were the activities intuitive? Did you know what to do?
What feelings did these activities elicit?
How did our exhibit feature into visitors’ larger experiences of the museum?
How did this framing of “encounter” fit within their broader lived experience? Did it provide any new language or ideas?

Asking New Questions

After sharing our design with others, several new questions emerged. We intend to carry these questions with us into the future of our work.

How do experiences in museums shape us? How do you bring the role and mindset of the designer into other spaces dedicated to formation?
How can designers contribute to the formation of visitors both during their experiences in the museum space and through the reflections they take with them as they leave?

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