Take Me There: Egypt

The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis


Continuing our successful partnership in web and interactive projects with the world’s largest children’s museum,  we concepted  and created a kiosk game of three interconnected touch screen units, showing how the Nile River impacts Egyptian life.

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Tags

Animation, Graphic Design, Interactives / Games, Kiosk, Usability / Accessibility, User Interface Design, Kids, Education, Museum & Performing Arts

<p>Three 42-inch touchscreen monitors — depicting  the Aswan Dam, Nile farmland and an urban Egyptian city — require kids to coordinate and cooperate to share water resources in order to win the game.</p> <p>Paper prototyping, user beta testing and post-launch audience observation were vital to uncovering and ensuring the best possible learning experience and immersive gameplay.</p> <p>This was the first time three touchscreens were interconnected at the museum. Our interactive gurus ensured that not only are the actions of one screen instantaneously displayed on the others, but the entire project was deployed using Adobe AIR so we can easily update the game via a simple graphic installer program.</p>

Case Study

Challenges

Over the years, the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis has come to rely on Bean Creative as a trusted web and interactive development partner. So when they conceived of a cutting-edge game about the Nile River involving three interconnected 42” kiosk touchscreens, we were a natural fit.

As part of the Take Me There: Egypt exhibit, the game’s goals are to educate children about the importance of the Nile River to the many people who live along its shores. If someone upriver pollutes or overuses the water supply, the rest of the citizens downriver suffer. But how do you depict this inter-reliance in way that doesn’t trivialize the water management challenges faced by Egyptians?


Solutions

Connecting multiple touchscreens and allowing them to interact based on visitor input had never been attempted or accomplished before at the Museum, so our expertise in touch development and technology was particularly vital to the project’s success.

Our technical experts set to work to create a gaming system where all of the monitors understood what the others were doing at any given time during the game, while managing the computer resources in a way that wouldn’t tax the bandwidth and computer set-up necessary by the Museum.

And our game developers conceived and tested several iterations of water control panels and game progression scenarios to ensure that it was well-paced, fun, engaging and educational.

The entire interactive was deployed using Adobe AIR so that we can easily update the game remotely with a simple graphic installer program, easing maintenance of the interactive by museum staff. Bean Creative also developed a touch tracking system so we and the Museum can see how successful the game is with visitors.


Results

Usability and educational impact studies have proven that this unique interactive is extremely successful in encouraging cooperative gameplay. This outcome is a major coup since anyone who steps foot in a children’s museum knows how kids love to break away from their family to explore solo.

In addition, tracking data has confirmed that the unique approach gave kids an understanding of the Nile’s many important uses and how citizens must share this precious resource.


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