Biomimicry Innovation Lab

Working with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), we created the Biomimicry Innovation Lab, a digital playspace that allows learners to discover and embrace 21st Century Naturalism by creating nature-inspired solutions to improve the world around them. We investigated learning theories and explored the design space of the problem, ideated and refined our solution using storyboards and wireframes, and presented and demoed our final product to the client.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) approached us to develop a solution that would broaden and extend their impact among summer camp program attendees. They offer variety of week-long summer education programs for exploring a variety of aspects of natural science and whose goal is to foster a generation of 21st Century Naturalists, but the camp experience fails to endure once students leave at the end of the week.

We started by exploring the types of learners that would be in the summer camps by creating identity models, and determining the strengths and weaknesses each type of learner brings to the camp experience. Through these models and other brainstorming techniques, We then identified the learning gaps for students- what was their current state, and how do we help them reach our goal state of long-term engagement in 21st century naturalism? We developed hypotheses about why the learners are stuck in the current state, as well as overarching plans to get them to the goal state, which are aligned with the museum's 21st Century Naturalism Framework.

Using the needs we discovered, we scoped down our project for a particular demographic: 8-13 year-olds before they enter one of the museum's summer camps. After scoping, we built out project concepts through two cycles building storyboarding with scenarios and getting feedback from classmates and CMNH stakeholders. We then created learning goals for our experience that aligned with our overarching plans to help learners achieve the goal sate.

Our final product is the Biomimicry Innovation Lab, which incorporates both in-museum and online components to create a community of 21st century naturalists. It entices learners in via a touchscreen in the museum or online via social media prompts. It then engages learners to use biomimicry mix and match features from living organisms to design a product that solves a human problem. Finally, it extends the learning by connecting to the content of the museum's summer camps and encouraging replay.