Knowing Nature Game Design
Case Study
project management, learning design, user experience design
Driving Question
How do games intentionally connected to a museum exhibition impact audience engagement and attainment of the exhibition's learning objectives?
Context
In 2023, the MSU Museum became the inaugural site to host the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES)’s Knowing Nature: Stories of the Boreal Forest exhibition. The exhibition featured striking photography and videography and focused on discussing the biodiversity and global importance of our northernmost forests through first-person stories, commissioned objects, and interactive experiences.
As part of the MSU Museum CoLab Studio’s efforts to experiment with different technologies within exhibitions, I formed an interdisciplinary team of five students to develop a game inspired by the content of Knowing Nature. As a mostly didactic exhibition, the goal of the game design project was focused on advancing the exhibition’s learning objectives and experimenting with its impacts on audience engagement.
Process
As an interdisciplinary team spanning fields such as game design and development, writing, and integrative biology, a large part of my role was mentoring the students and helping them learn how to effectively communicate and work across disciplines (i.e. “design” might mean something very different to a game producer as it does to someone in user experience design). I helped them to see the ways that different ideas outside of their disciplines can be productively leveraged and discussed, and focused on helping them see the opportunities within different disciplinary perspectives and recognizing those ideas as strengths rather than challenges.
I asked the students to begin by looking at the content of the exhibition as well as the exhibition’s desired learning objectives created by the SITES team and brainstorm around what concepts would be best to emphasize in the game. They then worked to focus on two key learning objectives of the exhibition and center their game design around advancing those two objectives. I focused on managing the overall project deadlines with an Agile framework and ensured the students met weekly to check in with their work, provide feedback, and ensure we were on track to complete the project. I also helped the students prepare for presentations with MSU’s Board of Trustees as well as to manage a table during “Knowing Nature’s” opening reception.​​
The students ultimately created A Boreal Balance, a resource-based game that introduced the player to several scenarios within the boreal ecosystem and how to protect the forest. The game can be played as a standalone, but those that explore the exhibition and engage with the content panels can solve the game much faster than those that do not.
Results
Our colleagues at the Smithsonian loved the final product of the game, and wanted to make it available to all venues that will host “Knowing Nature” in the future. “A Boreal Balance” will be traveling along with the “Knowing Nature” exhibition to its future venues and available on the App Store and Google Playstore.
Additionally, I presented our work developing the game at the Smithsonian Education Summit as well as at the Smithsonian Affiliates conference. These presentations helped to amplify our work to a national audience and demonstrate ideas for how different technologies and tools can be used to enhance learning within a museum.
Learn More About A Boreal Balance
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MSU Students Partner with Smithsonian and MSU Museum for Impactful Collaborations
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Applying Interactive Technologies in New Ways to Support Student Engagement (Smithsonian Education Summit Conference Presentation)