Inspiration
We are a team of 3 storytellers who have experience and passion in design, technology and nonprofits. Moreover, we are museum fanatics in the world, visiting museums wherever we travel. Scarlett especially has been awarded Best museum volunteer of Shanghai (China), where she led online/in person bilingual tours to foreign visitors weekly. All of these personal encounters helped us better see their pain points during brainstorming, as we looked at examples of other industrial museums in the US, with similar size and scale, but also international museums like The Met and the British museum to see their app development and functionalities. We produced an app to enhance visitor experience for more people, to better serve the needs of diverse groups in Waltham and beyond.
What it does
The app primarily functions as an integrated digital platform for museum visitors. It translates the majority of the museum’s website functions to a digital tablet. From online museum exhibitions and scanning objects with a QR code, to special programing and contact forms, the app is your one stop shop for Charles River Musuem and the America's industrial past.
How we built it
We communicated with the manager at the meet the nonprofit event, as well visiting the museum onsight to provide digital improvements using our skills and passion. We wanted to develop an integrated solution not only involving certain tactics as QR code scanning, figma, and coding languages such as HTML, CSS and react, but also useful information for external and internal users around the world.
Scarlett worked primarily on developing the visual arts and creating the video, script and other writing/graphic components of the project. Keer utilized figma and computational programs to build a demo for the entire app, implementing different accessible functionalities. Nicole designed the QR code scan and interactive web page demo which helps anyone, from any place and any time to review the objects live.
Challenges we ran into
Because of our unique team formation, working across different time zones was a small hurdle we overcame. Besides this, our biggest challenge was narrowing down a broad list of ideas we wanted to accomplish. We initially proposed a development with timeline stamps, but after considering other factors such as time, budgeting, and feasibility, we wanted to narrow our focus into a practical, comprehensive APP product.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our team comes from a very interdisciplinary academic background with the same goal and purpose in mind: to help rejuvenate the entire museum experience. While it was freezing cold in Boston, Nicole and Keer worked remotely all weekend to produce the app; Scarlett is studying abroad in Singapore, working in a different timezone. We are also proud that we are not only providing an app with important functions such as QR code scanning, but an app that can truly transform the museum experience modeled after international standards- all in just 48 hours! We are truly living and experiencing the global, remote experience!
What we learned
We gained a lot of confidence seeing this as a product and an actual solution for not only Charles River museum but also museums worldwide. With an integrated platform, there’s a lot we could accomplish as student hackers of all backgrounds to solve pressing issues. We learned about the importance of time management, planning, and task delegation, as well as multitasking under pressure and deadlines.
What's next for The Charles River Museum App
We would like to pursue a 3D model and animation of the museum on the app, serving as an interactive map for the visitors around the world. Nicole and Keer come from a technical computer science background, whether it is in their natural language processing or machine learning research, while Scarlett is an anthropology major with a museum study background. We would actively seek collaboration and promotion with other players, with our trainings to better the digitalization of the museum.
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