Mt Cook School visit to Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa, Dec 2023. Photo by Neil Price. Te Papa
Mt Cook School visit to Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa, Dec 2023. Photo by Neil Price. Te Papa
Dinos session for Te Papa whānau, Dec 2023. Photo by Jo Moore. Te Papa
Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa | Dinosaurs of Patagonia, Te Papa, Dec 2023. Photo by Neil Price. Te Papa
The Click Suite and Head & Tail teams joined the Te Papa exhibition project team to brainstorm and shape a potential interactive experience to be added to the existing Ngā Taniwha o Rūpapa | Dinosaurs of Patagonia exhibition. We worked through objectives, opportunities, problems, and even big dreams to finally settle on an experience that allowed young visitors to create their own dinosaur and style it exactly as they liked it.
We explored several concepts, tested these on a local school*, and then began our UX flow of the selected experience. Head & Tail created a beautiful illustrative style which made the process feel very creative to the users, and allowed multiple colours and textures to be added to the dinos; allowing visitors to make something quite unique and thrilling for them to see.
Throughout production we did paper testing at Te Papa, to identify UX issues early on, and even to test proposed functions before we built them. Development was done by the Te Papa team and we all worked closely together to fine-tune as we went.
The installation itself is a three kiosk set up, with a large projection screen. Having created and styled your dino, you can then release it onto the large screen and get a selfie with it while it poses. There's also an option to snap a QR code, and access your dino later at home.
In terms of behaviour, we noticed people taking care over their creations, sometimes re-making them before they were ready to "release" their perfect creature. Repeat usage observed is very high, as well as kids doing it together with a sibling or friend, discussing options and making choices based on what the options enable the dino to do "I want a long neck so I can reach high leaves". The engagement is very high with a dinosaur being created every single minute of every single day - that's hundreds of dinos being made every day; the kiosks barely get a chance to go into screensaver mode!
*A personal highlight of the project was during early user research, kids at a local school when asked "What would make it great?" said: "make it like the eels game" (another Click Suite creation). Out of the mouths of babes.