Colorful Connections

Community Engagement -- March 2024 - May 2024
Background
In 2024, a group of Exploratorium volunteers who expressed interest in participating in a prototyping challenge in conjunction with Exploratorium staff. The goal was to present our work at in May to each other, with potential to see further development of the best prototype.
Our design mandate for this year’s prototype challenge was to design a socially interactive exhibit for the Exploratorium. This led us to design an exhibit that would involve participants at the museum interacting with each other on a social level. Out of four main prototypes suggested by team members (Safe Haven, Speed Numbers, Colorful Connections, Face Merge), we decided on a color interaction exhibit, Colorful
Connections.
Context
Colorful Connections is a socially interactive exhibit based on the colors around us. The exhibit will consist of a color wheel with six color selections. Museum participants will spin the wheel for a random color selection, or rotate the wheel to choose their own color. When the color is selected, the exhibit will automatically detect it, and deliver a color card / lanyard to the participant to read and wear (if desired). On the color card are interesting facts about how the color name developed, a color sticker for participants to wear around the museum, question prompts about color, and interactive prompts for participants to use to interact with other participants around the museum after they visit the exhibit. The cards were bilingual English/Spanish, in keeping with the current exhibit designs at the Exploratorium.


Process



Our project started in April 2024 during Global Volunteering Month for brainstorming and team-building. We began by prototyping several exhibit ideas at the Exploratorium, based on our design mandate, using materials provided, and then consolidated our ideas into four main prototypes on an interactive Miro board in-person and also over Zoom. We also used Google Docs and a Discord channel to share design updates as we worked on our design. Using a Google form poll, we narrowed our ideas into one project, and created a cardboard mockup of our Colorful Connection idea. We then broke off into several sub-teams to work on creating a full-scale CNC cut mockup of our color wheel, laser-cut color cards and labels for the exhibit to “dispense” to participants, signage, and documentation for our project.


Final Results



Colorful Connections is an activity to catalyze co-worker and museum visitor connections through color. Its purpose is to expand and deepen our relationships inside (and maybe beyond) the work place! Our idea stems from early conversations our team had about isolation and loneliness and the need, but also desire to connect more deeply with each other. Colorful Connections works as a walk-up activity where one participant spins the wheel, lands on a color and then receives a color card that includes a prompt and color. The participant then can reflect on the prompt and fact and go find another participant with the same color card or a participant with a different color card! These two individuals are then encouraged to ask each other about the prompts on their respective cards and, hopefully, dive into a meaningful conversation. After the interaction, participants can walk around and find a new person with a color card to interact with and repeat the process. The goal is to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with people you may not know as well, or learn new things about each other.
So come take a spin at the wheel and begin forming colorful connections!

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