Food Sustainability Exhibit
For Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum of Chicago
Timeline
January 2025 - In Progress
Team
Solomiya Ohirko, Nour Abuawad, Ethan Korb, Bola Akpan, My Do, Kyara Munzani
My Role
Team leader, UX Designer, UX Researcher, and UX Developer
Tools
Teamwork, UX Research (Competitive Analysis, User Research, Surveys, Empathy Mapping, Affinity Map), Prototyping, Wireframe, Jira, Figma, Unity
Our team is redesigning the Food Sustainability Exhibit for the Chicago Nature Museum to create a more engaging and educational experience for middle school students. The new interactive digital platform uses games, visuals, and thoughtful design to teach students about composting, food waste, and gardening in a way that’s fun, clear, and action-driven.
OVERVIEW
THE PROBLEM: A Boring Experience That Doesn’t Stick
The current Food Sustainability Exhibit at the Chicago Nature Museum is just a video on repeat. There’s no way to pause, explore, or interact with it. For visitors, especially for middle school students, it quickly becomes a boring and easy-to-tune-out experience.
We knew it needed more, something hands-on, fun, and educational.
OUR GOAL: Make It Stick
Our goal is to redesign the Food Sustainability Exhibit to better engage visitors through interactive, easy-to-understand content. The experience will align with the Sustainability Center’s mission by inspiring hope, encouraging personal and local action, and connecting visitors with resources like the Chicago Conservation Corps (C3). We’re designing within existing screens, aiming for a 6th grade reading level, and ensuring the experience is accessible and inclusive to all guests.
Let’s Explore the Process Step by Step:
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Let's Explore in Details
Let's Explore in Details
Competitive Analysis
We began our research by watching how visitors engaged with museum displays and digital systems at the Chicago History Museum. We observed what aspects of these displays encouraged and discouraged interaction. These observations helped us understand:
The typical visitors that spend time interacting with interactive exhibits
Which visual features and navigation methods produce the most engagement
Which content formats motivate visitors to continue exploring exhibits or digital platforms
Our design process incorporated real-world interaction analysis to create a visually attractive and navigable experience that engages young learners
User Survey Questions
Designed to understand middle and high school students' perspectives on museums and food sustainability
19 questions
Multiple choice, open-ended, scale-based
Collecting qualitative and quantitative data
Demographics
Museum Experience
Food Sustainability Knowledge
User Research
Purpose: Gather insights from the most relevant user group while maximizing the limited time available for participant recruitment
Specific target audience focus
Middle school guests
Distributed through our local networks and shared on community Facebook groups
Conducted 1 informal user interview but wanted to seek additional insights & perspectives
Screening questions regarding age and school level
Research Findings
Affinity Map
After collecting all our notes from interviews and surveys, things felt a little all over the place. To make sense of it all, we created an affinity map. It helped us group similar thoughts, spot patterns, and see what really mattered to our users. This step was key in turning raw feedback into clear insights that guided our design decisions.
📌Red notes: pain points
🌱Green notes: positive responses
🟣Purple notes: time-related
🔷Blue notes: neutral responses
Main Takeaways
4 out of 7 students don’t participate in any food sustainability practices
3-5 minutes students spend on each exhibit
most students are less aware about urban farming and composting
Students often find museum exhibits boring
Personas
Empathy Map
This empathy map helps us understand how a middle schooler might experience the interactive food waste exhibit at the museum. By mapping their thoughts, feelings, and actions, we can design an exhibit that’s not just informative but also interactive, personal, and inspiring, encouraging real-world action on food waste.
WireFraming and Prototyping
Step 1. Site Map
To better understand the user’s journey and interaction flow, we created a site map that visualizes the structure and navigation of the experience. This helped us identify key touchpoints, streamline the user flow, and ensure that each page supported the project's overall goals. By mapping out the content and functionality early on, we were able to make more informed design decisions.
Step 2. Sketches
To ensure every team member’s ideas were heard, we each sketched out our concepts individually before coming together to review and combine them. This approach encouraged diverse thinking, sparked creative solutions, and helped us align on a shared direction for the design.
Step 3. Wireframes
After consolidating our ideas through sketches, we translated them into wireframes to define the layout, functionality, and hierarchy of each screen. This step helped us visualize the user flow more clearly and prepare for prototyping.
Step 4. Prototyping
Finally, after aligning on a direction with both our team and the museum staff, we developed a high-fidelity prototype that brought our ideas to life. The prototype reflected the agreed-upon structure, interactions, and visual design, allowing us to test the full experience and gather feedback before final implementation..
Development
Development is currently in full swing as we bring our prototype to life using Unity! We're experimenting with interactions, animations, and visual elements to make the experience both educational and exciting. Next step is usability testing! Stay tuned—there’s more to come!
In the meantime, here’s a sneak peek of what we’ve been building in Unity. 👀✨
