Playful Science Engagement and Interactive Interpretation Prototyping: An Exploratory Study for the Science and Industry Museum

Buckingham, Christina

Abstract

Facilitating playful, informal learning about scientific subjects is both a rising and challenging area of research. Science museum settings offer an interesting opportunity to study this topic through the perspective of visitor engagement with STEM content and collections. Directed by a real-world brief from the Science and Industry Museum, the researcher investigates how digital interpretation techniques can be developed and explored to encourage playful, family-friendly engagement with steam engine science. Furthermore, the researcher examines how engagement with playful interactive interpretation prototypes could be measured and compared through the lens of intergenerational conversations and utterances with science capital themes.
The study centres on the creation of a collection of STEM interpretation prototypes designed and developed by the researcher to engage museum audiences with steam engine science using a playful, family-friendly approach. High-fidelity prototypes are examined using a mixed methods evaluation system focussed on a discourse analysis scoring scheme. The researcher labels this investigated development phase as proto-scoping and explores its potential to guide the direction of audience-driven interactive interpretation design. The findings demonstrate how visitor discourse is not only a useful indicator of family engagement and meaning-making but can also be a valid tool to compare one interactive interpretation approach to another. The results suggest a positive correlation between user enjoyment and science capital-themed discourse during the evaluation of two advanced prototypes designed to answer the same interpretation brief.
The work proposes an adjusted approach to the development of interactive interpretation in science museum settings by highlighting the value of visitor-driven, playful engagement and participatory prototyping. The proto-scoping strategy, trialled through this research, encourages creativity, exploration and audience agency in the early phases of interpretation design. Fundamentally, it demonstrates how playfulness and science capital development can be rooted in both the designed solutions and the creative practice.

Citation

Buckingham, C. (2024). Playful Science Engagement and Interactive Interpretation Prototyping: An Exploratory Study for the Science and Industry Museum. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Apr 25, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 1, 2024
• Keywords: Heritage engagement, STEM, Informal learning, Science Capital, Prototyping, Heritage interpretation, Interpretation design
• Award Date: May 31, 2024