A touchscreen interactive exploring the life and significance of a massive coast redwood tree round.
My Role: I defined the interactive direction and led the user experience design. I created the storyboards and early wireframes, and I collaborated on the final interface design. I designed, conducted and analyzed the front-end and in-processs user research. I also researched and wrote all content for the interactive.
Who I worked with: Exhibit Project Manager, Digital Project Manager, Software Developer, Visual UI Designer, Audio Visual Engineer, Illustrator, Videographer, Photographer, Scientific Advisors, Director of Exhibit Development.
Evaluation
Front-end card sort
I conducted a card sort evaluation to understand the ways that visitors were inclined to categorize and group information about redwoods, and found people were most most interested in themes I broadly identified as ‘redwood responsiveness to environment.’
+ Methods
•12 cards sorts were conducted, comprising 14 visitors.
•Visitors were given 15 cards with tidbits of information about coast redwoods on them.
•Participants were first asked to sort the cards according to their interest in the information and then asked to group the cards according to information that seemed to belong together and name their groups.
+ KEY FINDINGS
• Visitors wanted to look at the trees holistically, and in particular wanted to understand how climate events shaped the tree.
• The majority of participants were also interested in the inclusion of human historical dates in some manner, as is often done with redwood rounds.
• Content about the scientific analysis and the nuts and bolts anatomy of the tree grabbed visitors less, and should be incorporated into larger stories, and used minimally as stand alone stories.
Design and Development
Our initial concept was to have a very high-resolution image of the redwood round that visitors could zoom in on. Several different types of overlay information would be available to visitors, allowing them to easily explore the information they were personally most curious about.
Early UX Storyboard:
+ MULTIPLE OVERLAYS
Buttons in the sidebar apply different overlays to the tree to give a holistic view of how the life of the tree aligned with different climate eras and weather events.
+ ZOOM BY SEGMENT
Tapping zooms the frame into one of nine segments (planned due to photographic constraints in creating a single image that was zoomable to the degree we initially wanted). Different hot spots would appear once the individual rings were visible.
+ HOTSPOTS
Touching a hotspot activates additional content about the highlighted area of the tree, including overlay animations and pop-out videos, images, and text.
Concept Refinement
Prototyping our exhibit set-up revealed that many of the features we wanted to highlight would be visible to the naked eye. We decided against using image zoom as a primary mode of interaction for the exhibit; instead, the overview image of the round would serve as an interactive key for visitors to explore the tree round in front of them.
User Research
Working in collaboration with the visual UI designer, I conducted multiple rounds of user research and usability testing for this interactive, from rapid prototypes through the final in-situ tests that confirmed the interactive was working well.
+ RAPID PROTOTYPING
We tested several extremely rough prototypes with visitors, enabling our team to get feedback quickly on our ideas while minimizing the time demands on the software developer. As an example, the images above were shown as paper printouts, and helped us explore how we should lay out the historical timeline information. Though very rough, it was able to elicit the user feedback we needed to guide our process.
Content Development
To create the content for this interactive, I worked with an expert dendrochronologist as well as several other scientists. The stories were selected and structured based on what I’d learned from the card sort, and refined through our user testing process.
+ SAMPLE TEXT
SIDEBAR:
Strength Under Fire
In 1714, a large fire burned through the Prairie Creek forest, leaving scars on many trees—including this dark crevice. Its cause is unknown. The redwood’s thick, fibrous bark likely protected its wood from smaller fires, but this large fire left a mark.
POP UP:
Natural Causes
The Yurok Tribe has used low-intensity fires to maintain healthy redwood forests for centuries, but their controlled burns likely did not cause this particular fire. It burned hot and high enough to cause damage 154 feet above the ground, suggesting it was an uncontrolled natural wildfire.
Final Design
Final Design
Stories written
in tree rings
In the final design, visitors begin on an image of the tree round. There are a variety of clickable hotspots to explore events both in the tree’s life and larger climatic stories, and a historical timeline section.
Biography of a Redwood is memorable and meaningful to visitors
In the summative evaluation, 26% of visitors cited this interactive as the most memorable experience from the entire 8000 sq. ft. exhibition. Sample quotes from the evaluation made clear that the interactive was meeting the defined content and experience goals.
+ Photo Credit Info
Full bleed visitors using interactive 1 - Kathryn Whitney © California Academy of Scieces
Full bleed Redwood Forest - © Tamara Schwarz
Card Sort - Sarah Goodin© California Academy of Scieces
Measuring Redwood Round - © Tamara Schwarz
Full bleed pointing at round - Sarah Goodin © California Academy of Sciences
Alison behind raw round - Sarah Goodin © California Academy of Sciences
Alyson using microscope on round - Sarah Goodin © California Academy of Sciences
Full bleed visitors using interactive 2 - Kathryn Whitney © California Academy of Sciences
Close up of wood grain - Sarah Goodin © California Academy of Scieces
Man in front of Round - © Scott Ross