Project Overview

How People Make Things (HPMT) is an NSF-funded traveling exhibit created by the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh in collaboration with the producers of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (FCI), and the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE). Families explore basic manufacturing processes through hands-on activities to cut, mold, deform and assemble real objects. The learning objectives for How People Make Things are to:

1. Enable visitors to see objects as things that are made through a process
2. Help visitors understand that objects result from three transformative processes: molding (adding material to a mold to make a new shape), cutting (removing material to make a new shape), and deforming (forcing material into a new shape)
3. Make visitors familiar with the concept of assembly and the techniques by which two or more separately made pieces are joined together
4. Recognize the importance of people in the manufacturing process
5. Realize that the basic processes to make things by hand are the same as those used in manufacturing, and the differences have to do with the machines that add speed, precision, power, reliability, and standardization

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Formative Evaluation: From Prototype to Final Exhibit

The HMPT project team used an iterative formative evaluation and prototyping process to ensure that the final exhibit experiences would be engaging, comprehensible, and relevant to visitors. To guide that process, the team created a shared set of learning objectives to focus exhibit development. Prototyping sessions assessed the potential of exhibit activities and mediation (i.e. signage, videos, etc.) to enhance visitors' comfort with manufacturing topics. The design team and UPCLOSE researchers observed, recorded, and interviewed families regarding their interactions, conversations, and understanding of specific exhibit concepts.

Findings from these prototyping sessions were shared in follow-up meetings. Short formative evaluation reports were used to provide the exhibit team with examples of visitor behavior and conversation using visitors' own voices to help stimulate discussion, and assist the designers in moving forward with the conceptualization and refinement of exhibit experiences.

Prototyping Molding with Wax

One of the goals of the exhibit was to provide a rich learning environment that helped families rehearse ways of talking about complex manufacturing processes like molding. Exhibit developers proposed a simple molding experience where visitors could pour warm wax into cold molds to form new shapes and explore the concept for state change. The project team prototyped Molding with Wax simultaneously with other molding exhibit ideas to determine which groups of activities allowed visitors to make the strongest process connections.

Follow our formative evaluation process where research and design came together to improve visitor experiences:

	Key Findings	Design Changes
Prototyping Session #1 Visitors pour wax into closed molds of shapes and letters.	Keeping it Real When the molded objects were things like letters, numbers, or abstract patterns, visitors were observed simply naming the objects. Switching to molds of everyday objects yielded more explanatory visitor conversations.	The molds in this exhibit are of objects that are familiar to children (i.e. a spoon, tire tread, chocolate bar, and shoe sole). These objects also appear in other exhibit locations to reinforce their connection to the molding process.
Prototyping Session #2 Visitors pour wax into closed molds of everyday objects.	Hidden from View Closed molds hid the hardening of the wax from a liquid to a solid. As a result, children thought of molding as a magical process, and did not understand the underlying scientific concept of state change.	Open molds were used to make the material transformation visible. Signage was created using simple language to define state change and its relationship to the molding process.
Prototyping Session #3 Visitors pour wax into open molds within a safe enclosure.	The Reset Problem Many visitors did not remove the wax part from the mold to reset the experience for the next visitor. Because some visitors did not wait to observe state change within the mold, the removal of the wax object was seen as an additional opportunity for those same visitors to quickly view state change in action.	Signage was altered to motivate visitors to throw the wax object back in the vat and watch it melt from a solid into a liquid.
Final Exhibit Element Visitors pour wax into open molds of everyday objects.	The Connections In-between Families had the deepest discussions around Molding with Wax when a video of the molding process, examples of molded objects, and real machinery were present during prototyping.	This simple, hands-on experience with molding was connected to a more complex example, operating an industrial Injection Molder to manufacture a spoon. Molding process videos, artifacts, and explanatory signage also helped build conceptual bridges between exhibit experiences.

Find out what one of the HPMT exhibit designers had to say about the final exhibit element, Molding with Wax »