A Day At The Museum - The Buddha’s Path: A Reflective Museum Experience
OVERVIEW
Taking inspiration from the life of Buddha and his teachings, we designed a reflective museum by experimenting with spatial design, subtle yet immersive technologies, and experiential learning principles in a deeply personal way.
Role
UX Research
UX Design Prototyping
Team
Team of 4 (myself
+ 3 HCI grads)
Tools
Figma
Procreate
Adobe Premium Pro
Timeline
6 weeks
GOAL
The main goal is to design a journey that urges visitors to settle in, contemplate, and learn about the theme.
SOME OF THE QUESTIONS RAISED TO ACHIEVE THE GOAL
How to make visitors learn more about artifacts in a more experiential way?
What learning experiences could they take away with them?
A narrative that allows for self-exploration as well as learning about history?
EXPLORED MUSEUMS AND THEIR INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCES FOR CONTEXT
As museums are new to us, we explored the different technologies and interactions used worldwide to gain an understanding. To make each section more immersive, we also researched various interactions and how to create engaging technology.
Visited the Eskenazi museum at Bloomington, Indiana
We conducted a firsthand observation, which provided direction on how to approach reflection through print media and inspired new ideas for enhancing visitor engagement.
Secondary research
Watched videos, and read literature reviews of various museums and how they curate the interactions in the world.
Integrating advanced technologies like AR/VR into its contemporary art exhibits.
AROS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark
Museuem designed to be accessible to a wide audience, including international visitors
Miraikan, Japan
Interactive galleries and exhibits providing an engaging environment to learn
Science Museum, UK
Incorporates immersive theaters into its interactive science exhibits
The Franklin Institute, Japan
STORY TIME
Life of Buddha
We’ve split the life story of Buddha into different elements of the story which helps us to decide what to focus on more
Setting
A young prince named Siddhartha Gautama lived filled with every luxury and comfort.
Plot
But one day, curious Buddha asked to see the world outside the palace walls. On his journey, he saw an old man, a sick person, a dead body, and a peaceful monk.
Climax
Impacted by these experiences, he realized the impermanence of worldly pleasures leaving his luxurious life.
Resolution
After years of intense self-discipline, he achieved enlightenment under the Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya.
We wanted to incorporate Buddha’s teachings through his life story
Based on the narrative elements, we’ve split the museum into three parts focusing on the plot, climax, and resolution
From the get-go, we were inspired by the “cyclical” life theme portrayed by Buddhist literature and aesthetics, from the prayer wheels, and mandala art.
“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
-from the acclaimed book
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Enlightenment
Impermanence
Suffering
After deciding on the spiral layout, we iterated numerous times on the map and layout of the exhibits about the narrative that we wanted to convey. It felt organic to keep it a spiral with Suffering and Impermanence exhibits on one level, and after the shock/climax of the experience, symbolically induce transformation and enlightenment by elevating visitors to the second level of the museum.
THEN, WE BRAINSTORMED, DEVELOPED FRAGMENTED IDEAS, AND CREATED PROTOTYPES TO TEST THEM
Screen-based mudra mimicking
Building/Carving Buddhist sculptures
Immersive eight fold path with screen based learnings
Leave a Karma Message on the Wall
Wheels of life - a group activity with people
Make your own sculpture with hologram
FRAGMENTED IDEAS
How early prototyping helped us
Raise important questions along the way - about accessibility, practicality, insensitivity.
Helped us to Identify interactions and several touch points throughout the museum exhibit.
Explore Individual vs Group dynamics of the museum experience.
Helped us with sequencing our narrative and touch points.
STITCHING TOGETHER
We wanted to create “an experience”, and went through several iterations of the narrative. This is where we spent the most time. We took help from (Parrish, 2008) - Opening, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, Catharsis, and Conclusion.
The Act we had:
TESTING THE FLOW
After we fixed our flow, we wanted to make sure that it was seamless, so we tested with our batchmates where we showed the overall flow as shown below
Side Note: You won’t be able to read a thing—it’s just to give you a taste of how we tested the flow!
Based on the testing we had to revamp the sections of the museum
as shown below
.
Suffering Path
SPOILER ALERT
Our final concept still wasn’t very toned down, and people might feel it insensitive, but this is the best we were able to do as suffering is indeed a part of our lives and it is necessary to confront it.
GOAL
To make visitors contemplate the transient nature of life and the cyclical theme of suffering as similar to what Buddha has gone through
CHALLENGES
To strike a balance between creating an impact and being sensitive toward the visitors.
BACKSTORY
We wanted visitors to feel the same way Buddha did when he first saw suffering, but since he was sheltered in a palace, we couldn’t recreate that exact experience. So, to bring the impact, we made the journey through suffering dramatic and easy for visitors to empathize with by looking at it through their own self, but at the same time, keep in mind to be sensitive as there will be visitors from diverse groups.
ITERATIONS AND FINDINGS
Our initial ideas were to depict suffering in three different exhibits: old age, illness, and death.
Some pictures from a walkthrough testing we did with our prototypes
Old Age
We considered using a filter where users
could see their hands getting wrinkled.
But, while testing people raised concerns about how it would appear if the visitor was already old.
After watching videos of filters on
elderly people, we realized there
was only a minor difference despite
their age.
Illness
we came up with a touch-based screen where visitors could hear the noise of people coughing.
But, during testing, we discarded this idea as the cough sounded more like a dinosaur roaring and felt unnecessary and disconnected
We realized that adding activities in
each section might feel fragmented,
so we opted for a single artifact.
Death
For death, we explored various bizarre ideas, such as
Showing images of deceased individuals or prompting visitors to think about someone who had recently passed away.
Another idea was to create a silent, cold atmosphere and make visitors hear a heartbeat sound until the death section, where it would stop to depict death.
With these considerations in mind, we decided to use one artifact a mirror-like screen—throughout the suffering path to depict the three types of suffering.
Visitors see themselves in the mirror aging and falling ill, with the room temperature slightly increased
Then the their mirror image fades away, and they notice their footprints disappearing, symbolizing death.
“AHA” MOMENT
BREAKTHROUGH
.
Impermanence
This is where we wanted to create the “AHA” moment or a shock factor in their museum journey.
GOAL
To make the visitors create an attachment and teach them about detachment and the importance of letting go.
CHALLENGES
To come up with an activity that’s quick but as well as creates a sense of attachment to the visitors and there should be some kind of relevance to Buddha
BACKSTORY
We wanted to create an AHA moment believing that it’s essential to create “the experience” for our learning objective of impermanence to the visitors without creating a negative feeling. This was something we had contemplated during our design process and iterated on quite a bit.
As we were discussing the narrative, we knew we wanted to have a dramatic moment between these too. Destroying the wax sculpture they created came in almost as a joke but we loved the drama!!!!
Visitors would learn more about the significance of various Buddha poses and mimics the hand gestures
They can mold their own gesture/pose and get a picture clicked
Only to realize that it is going to melt and get destroyed on the pedestal.
By creating two different sculptures using wax molding and destroying one of them and giving the other one in the end
We contemplated different variations of it to try and mellow it down
Idea
Thus we came up with the photo booth idea. Not only will they have a memory of the wax sculpture, but also the teachings through the strip of photos showing their reaction to the process of impermanence.
But, this would move away from the “detachment” concept we were trying to make them experience.
and also, we wanted to make sure that one visitor’s experience does not affect the others. Thus we came up with the idea of funneling this path by having a single entry and exit point.
.
Enlightenment
INITIAL STRUGGLE
We wanted visitors to get enlightened but then realized that achieving enlightenment isn't feasible in just one museum visit. This might lead visitors to perceive enlightenment as easy to attain, diminishing its significance.
GOAL
To make visitors contemplate the journey from suffering to impermanence and deeply reflect on one’s own attachment to things
CHALLENGES
Creating 'AHA' moments to convey enlightenment to diverse group of people
BACKSTORY
The Bodhi Tree is a sacred fig tree where Siddhartha became The Buddha and attained enlightenment, after meditating for 49 days under its canopy
we rephrased it from 'You (visitors) will get enlightened’ to 'This is how enlightenment looks,'
and we felt that it should have a dramatic factor
We implemented the door opening to a brightly lit room after the meditation
To symbolically represent enlightenment, we also elevate the entire chamber from Level 1 to Level 2, going up the spiral.
Participant would actually want to feel elevated
However, users wasn’t completely satisfied with the exit of the Bodhi Chamber during testing
Claimed that they wouldn’t feel enlightened by simply looking at the bright light
To address this we conducted one more round of ideation where we introduced the circular spot discs which would elevate a few cms above but this would create accessibility issues. Hence we decided not to go forward with it
Instead to create a sense of enlightenment, we ideate on the Bodhi Tree leaves to be illuminated slowly towards the end.
It would be a nice time to watch our Museum Journey Video explaining the exhibits in detail
REFLECTION
The prototyping first approach was a great learning experience where we didn’t entirely depend on the research even to start thinking about the idea
The biggest takeaway from this project would be the value of putting narrative first while designing.
We encountered numerous obstacles along the way, but receiving feedback from our peers offered fresh perspectives and helped us overcome creative blocks.
Other works
