February 27th 2012 – March 2nd 2012

The astronomer in me just got an ego boost! I devoted my week-long spring break towards volunteering at the incredible and pioneering Adler Planetarium, Chicago. The Space Visualization Laboratory at Adler plans to set up a touchscreen exhibit of The Milky Way Project where visitors will be able to use to touchscreen to identify and annotate stellar objects on a galactic image.

Screen Grab of the Milky Way Project

My work here was two-fold -

1) I helped evaluate the usability of this project when moved from a computer screen to a large tabletop multi-touch display. I conducted ethnographic and usability studies on how people interact with the project on a tabletop touch screen. It wasn’t an easy task when at times 8 kids were simultaneously trying to do something on the screen!

2) The planetarium wants to improve interaction and engagement with an already installed Milky Way pictorial exhibit. I created an Augmented Reality based Layar extension that would allow visitors to find and learn about stellar objects in that exhibit, using their phone or tablets. See it in action at the related blog post. The test app is now under business evaluation, and the project can soon see the light of the day!

Testing 'The Milky Way' Layar App

There were a host of challenges here – budgeting (Adler is a non-profit); immensely diverse user base including impatient kids, learned grown-ups and casual observers; lack of multi-touch support in current table top display.

Key Skills:  Ethnography, Usability Evaluation, Augmented Reality, Ambient Informatics

Read the related blog post – Contextual Enquiry on Chicago!