The Magic House Children's Museum
Nanonation has created numerous unique projects for the Magic House Children's Museum in St. Louis, Missouri.
Below are a few of our most recent installations.
The Pixel Art Project
For their most recent project, the Magic House Children’s Museum, they looked to Nanonation to create a digital version of their large St. Louis skyline mural. Creatively constructed from the flat end of crayons assembled by different schools and groups in the community section by section for months. The project became known as the Pixel Art project, geared toward teaching visitors the concept of creating images using pixels through an interactive digital process in which guests could participate.
The first part of the project consists of a 65-inch screen showing a similar image of the St. Louis skyline as the existing crayon mural. The user can then select a section of the image to work on with the intent that many different visitors can work on the large image by completing various areas of the picture. The partially completed image then remains on display until finally finished, which could take several days.
The second part of the Pixel Art project has younger visitors in mind. It includes two smaller screens that contain simple 8-bit artwork with fewer colors and less detail making it easier to complete in a shorter timeframe. Users can then email their finished artwork to themselves or family members.
Kenya's Kids
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum, sought to elevate user experience at Kenya’s Kids, a rotating exhibit. The museum offers hands-on and interactive based learning for children, designed to inspire a love of learning. Nanonation designed an innovative solution to enhance children’s learning experience by utilizing Augmented Reality with 3-Dimensional rendering to bring the animal statues to life.
Using tablets, visitors snap photos of the elephant, giraffe, monkey, and a lioness with her cubs, as if they were on a safari in Kenya’s savanna. After taking the picture, the AR element is triggered to display a 3-Dimensional rendered image of the animal in its habitat. Information about their species and lifecycle will also appear, allowing the user to swipe through various facts.
The STEM Interactive
Digital Exhibit
The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Interactive Digital Exhibit for Magic House consists of four activities centered around visitors choosing which STEM category would best suit their career path.
The first activity is the STEM-oji Creation Station, where visitors create a user character and answer questions tailored to STEM categories. The responses correspond to career paths such as Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math. Then, visitors can learn more about their chosen career path and play a quick game highlighting activities corresponding to specific STEM categories with their STEM-oji.
After getting their STEM-oij character on its chosen career track, users can find more information regarding the careers and learning paths they can take for each specific STEM Category. This station also provides the opportunity to play quick, repeatable mini-games highlighting activities in the corresponding categories to their STEM career course. Once completing the game successfully, their STEM-oji will receive its career uniform.
The third station consists of interactive screens where users discover other STEM-oij’s created throughout the day. They can also learn additional information on the career path of their choice and how their selection compares to others who have visited the museum.
Lastly, the final station utilizes Nanonation’s photobooth application, where a series of filters reflect uniforms worn by professionals in each of the four categories. Users can select a uniform filter and take their picture along with the option to email or text the photo, creating a unique keepsake.