Co-creation & Social Connection with 55+ Adults

Project Description:

Ingenium is a Crown Corporation overseeing three Ottawa museums, including the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the Canada Aviation and Space Museum and the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum.
Currently, the majority of Ingenium content exists in physical format, however, they are now interested in modernizing and expanding their digital museum offerings to engage audiences more broadly across Canada. Pandemic-related closures of museums underscored the need to do more than just replicate physical museums on a website to attract an online audience as their ongoing challenge is to attract and maintain a loyal audience in the face of immense competition for viewers’ attention.
Our study first sought understanding of museum visitors’ motivations, interests and perspectives. To this end, a literature review was conducted to gain insight into the current thinking on this topic. This led the research team to focus on interactive digital content that fosters co-creation and social connection in adults over 55.
A survey was administered, recruiting via social media and through organizations and groups that target this demographic across Canada. Semi-structured interviews with a sub-sample of survey respondents followed. These data were analysed, revealing a number of key insights, primary among these – this demographic has accessibility needs and values opportunities to learn and to connect socially. From this, Experience Principles and a User Persona were created. Next, the team used these insights and artifacts to ideate potential solutions.
The proposed solution is an online guessing game for grandparents and grandkids and makes use of digital museum artifacts. Grandparents and grandchildren play against each other to gain points. To begin, players create an avatar and select an artifact theme. Each artifact is presented onscreen with the question ‘what is this?’ and a multiple choice response can be selected. After each guess, a brief description of the artifact is given with the option to tag it to learn more post-game. At the end of the game, players are encouraged to share their experiences and even possibly their real-life knowledge of the artifacts in an online guest book, thereby co-creating content for other visitors to view. Players can also share their scores on social media. More advanced versions of the game might include in-game purchases to personalise avatars or the option to purchase merchandise from the online store. Accessibility features ensure the barrier for engagement is low.
This solution accounts for the 55+ group’s desire to learn, to connect to family and share, while meeting accessibility requirements. An additional advantage is that the solution offers Ingenium the opportunity to track interests and use for future marketing strategies.
As a team, we learned that consistent communication was essential for effective group functioning. Also, our research uncovered our assumptions of this demographic, teaching us the value of research in to avoid being led by assumptions. Another valuable lesson was learning to think differently, even with time constraints and required deliverables. UX research requires an expansive, exploratory thinking style, unimpaired by ego and this, while challenging, was very useful to experience.

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