Butting Heads
A museum exhibit on the importance of constructive disagreement.
Role: Design & Technology Lead
Methodologies: Systems Thinking, Experience Design, Graphic Design
Context: Capstone project
Date: Sept 2018 – Mar 2019
The ASK
As part of my capstone project for Knowledge Integration, with a team of 5 members, I was tasked to create a museum exhibit which addressed one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Research
We began by researching the causes for social instability in Canada. Through academic papers and engaging with citizens we understood that a high degree of political polarization strained critical relationships in our social fabric. We learned how echo chambers and refusing to engage with the “other side” only heightened these fractures. We found disagreement to be fundamental to all sustainable communities. The importance of engaging in constructive disagreements has been exemplified everywhere from geopolitical disputes to interpersonal relationships.
Through ideation sessions I brought forward the idea of creating our exhibit as a way of promoting constructive disagreement. Arguing, a socially sustainable community must be able to constructively integrate a multitude of perspectives to be sustainable in the long-term. We developed learning objectives which followed a coherent pedagogy through the exhibit. We defined four distinct learning objectives that built on each other.
Prototyping
We ideated, prototyped and tested key objects which would make the exhibit experiential. Most challenging was building a digital network board which showed how communities employing different disagreement strategies interacted with one another.
Based on our learning objectives and key objects I designed a learning map which took a systems thinking approach to how each of the exhibit objects would interplay with each other.
Before fabricating the exhibit we created a comprehensive storyboard that outlined the full experience of the visitor. Included were didactic text, notes, what the visitor should be seeing, feeling, and doing, a rough sketch of the visitor’s view, and the learning objectives in that moment. I led the layout design and put the document together.
Fabrication
Many weeks were spent in the woodshop painting and building all the custom components of the museum. This included a custom wooden Ipad mount, laser-cut wheel, and a fully interactive network board. I developed a design language for the exhibit which included colours, font, spacing and iconography for all of the text. I also directed, shot and edited an interview video which sat in the exhibit.
We embedded a research study that tracked people’s general attitude towards disagreement before and after going through the exhibit. We were able to determine that at an aggregate level people were more incline to engage in disagreement after going through the exhibit.
Exhibit photos
