Learning How to Build for the Future
Designing an Exhibit for the Cincinnati Museum Center
01
project
overview
I was tasked with creating a museum exhibit concept for the Cincinnati Museum center that would be fun and engaging for both children and adults. This concept would contain high-fidelity mockups of a website, mobile app, and wayfinding elements themed around the exhibit. After doing research on the museum, including taking a trip there to better understand it, I had arrive at an idea. This concept would be known as IGNITE.
IGNITE is an engine themed exhibit designed to be fun for all ages and peoples. It contains interactive and engaging features such as a tie-in app that allows users to build and race their own vehicles against each other. Throughout its rooms, IGNITE showcases the development of modern engines from primitive steam engines to the rockets that took humanity to the moon.
To get to the point of having a realistic and achievable concept for a museum exhibit, there were several steps that I needed to take to ensure that IGNITE would fit in with the goals and mission of the CMC.
Programs Used:
02
moodboards
and concept
Before even settling on the concept for IGNITE, I had to decide what an exhibit themed around engines and their evolution should even look like. My main design philosophy was to base each concept around a single word.
In my case, these two words were MOVEMENT and IGNITE. The mood board for the second concept (IGNITE) was far stronger and was the concept I decided to move forward with. Elements of this mood board were designed around the heat of engines, racecars, and my own childhood slot car set.
03
design
process
The first step of the main design process was to start with wireframe designs for both the website and mobile app. Each of these would have significantly different purposes and understanding them was a necessary step before going into detailed and polished designs.
Here is a low fidelity mockup of one of the workflows designed for the mobile app. It guides users through using the vehicle builder feature of the app, with blue highlights showcasing where users will tap to proceed. Above is the initial sketch that inspired the wireframe, and the right a higher quality wireframe made in Figma. The design actually underwent few changes between these two steps as it was a strong base.
This project also required the creation of a desktop website for the exhibit, which similarly needed wireframes to prototype its design.
These wireframes, as with the mobile app wireframes all featured annotations to make the function and features of the app / website clear to anyone looking at the design for the first time.
04
high
fidelity
With the low-fidelity mockups finished and tested for usability, it became time to create high-fidelity versions of them.
Using the colors and style defined in the mood board from Section 02, I created these higher quality versions using the Figma Design community to find accurate iPhone assets to ensure that my designs looked as professional as possible.
05
interactive
app design
While the desktop website was designed to inform visitors about the exhibit’s existence and entice them to come visit, the app was designed to enrich the exhibit experience and allow for repeated visits to remain interesting and exciting.
Gamification
The mobile IGNITE app uses the concept of gameification to immerse users within the exhibit, featuring a Pokemon Go style of augmented reality gameplay where users will locate vehicle parts in the exhibit and use them to build their own vehicles.
From there, the vehicles can be raced against other users of the app in a style more similar to Mario Kart.
07
creating
with ai tools
Building for my future
From start to finish, this project would not have been feasible to create in the short 3-month time span it was created within without the help of generative AI tools. Programs such as Google Gemini, Adobe Firefly, and ChatGPT helped out tremendously with creating images, iteration and ideation, and writing text.
The use of generative AI in this project was a very important step for me for the future of designs and design processes. AI tools are here to stay and we must learn how to use them effectively to stay competitive and innovative.
Mason Santalucia 