PGH Children's Museum

Today we took a field trip to the Children's Museum in Pittsburgh. We thought that it would be a good idea to get a feel of what current installations exist that cater to children and how they are designed. It was also a great way of finding out how children react to these exhibits so we know how we should design ours.

There were a lot of neat exhibits there, including a whole area dedicated to Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, which was filmed right here in Pittsburgh. They had all the memorable parts from the show including all of his puppets, the trolley, even an area where you could try on his sweaters and shoes!

They also had a display with a weird sort of xylophone. To use it, you place wooden balls on different colored dots. A different color represented a different note, and each row represented a different time. So you could place all of these balls down and then turn a crank and create your own song. It was a nice little interaction that kids had fun with (and we did too!).

They had many other interactive displays too, including pepper's ghost effects, magnetic spinning fields, balancing letters on your shadow, connecting tubes to make water flow through, crazy contraptions that involve pulling a ball up on a pulley system and then watching ti go down different tubes, creating your own paper out of goo, and many more exhibits that are too many to list! They also had an Animateering kiosk that was created by one of the past ETC groups.

In general we had a blast. We're all children at heart, and it was amazing to go and see what kind of fun you can have by just having simple displays that can stimulate your mind. It's also important to note that some of these exhibits did not require a lot of interactivity, and sometimes just doing something simple and seeing its effect can go a long way. For example, balancing words on your shadow is not hard, but it's fun to see the different things that you can do with it.

In the same respect, we also know that we always need to look at this from a child's perspective. For example, they had artwork at a child's height so that they can appreciate it. It's important to know these subtle differences and take them into account for our project.