Nature 360

We consulted with the education team at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH) on how to create successful learning experiences through their Nature 360 program. We conducted competitive analysis, identified the goals of the program, employed learning science theories, and conducted user testing to produce a report with guidelines for the museum to use in the future when Nature 360 content.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History's Nature 360 program , launched October 2018, aims to inspire naturalist beliefs and practices in 8-13 year olds. Through a combination of online articles, do-it-yourself activities, and in-museum skill labs, the Nature 360 program hopes to pique kids' interest, make the content tangible, and provide opportunities to delve deeper. As consultants, we were tasked with determining how best to structure their articles and do-it-yourself activities for the most educational impact.

We started by doing a competitive analysis of blogs, videos, magazines, and other media targeted at the 8-13 age range. We figured out what kind of topics they covered, the language they used to talk to kids, and which visual layouts drew the eye in. One challenge we faced was that we expected parents or teachers to be the entry point to the Nature 360 articles, so we needed to maintain a balance between catching the eye of adults while still being kid-friendly. We then reviewed various theories of learning, determining which ones were relevant given our context. Using our analyses, we created sample articles, layouts, and topic themes for use in user testing. We determined what visual elements (layouts, color schemes, fonts) were most appealing to kids, what topics they found interesting, and whether they enjoyed the overall experience. ​

We incorporated all of our findings to create a report to provide guidance to the CMNH staff as they launched and continue the Nature 360 program. We also wrote four articles and one do-it-yourself activity to demonstrate our guidelines and provide content for their first month it launched. We hope in the future that our investigations will lead to a more impactful program with more long-term success in achieving its goals.