Living Liquid: A Pathways Project Visualizing the Ocean’s Microbes and Their Impact on Our Planet

August 15th, 2010 - July 31st, 2012 | PROJECT

Living Liquid will identify strategies for creating visualization tools that can actively engage the public with emerging research about the ocean's microbes and their impact on our planet. It addresses a critical issue for the ISE field: creating ways for visitors to ask and answer their own questions about emerging areas of science with visualizations. This Pathway project will provide important lessons learned for a future full-scale development project at the Exploratorium's new location over San Francisco Bay, and for informal science educators and other professionals working to create interactive visualization tools using the vast data sets now available. Living Liquid is a collaboration between developers, educators and learning researchers at the Exploratorium, computer scientists at the Visualization Interface and Design Innovation Group at UC Davis, and marine scientists at the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education. The project's research and development process includes a front-end study of visitors' interests and prior knowledge related to ocean microbes, interviews with scientists to identify potential datasets and activities, a survey of candidate visualizations, and a series of prototypes to identify promising strategies to engage visitors with and allow visitors to explore large scientific datasets through visualization tools.

Project Website(s)

(no project website provided)

Project Products

Visitors' Prior Knowledge and Interests in Marine Microbes and Metagenomics
Living Liquid Exhibit Cluster: East Gallery Formative Evaluation

Team Members

Jennifer Frazier, Principal Investigator, Exploratorium
Joyce Ma, Co-Principal Investigator, Exploratorium

Funders

Funding Source: NSF
Funding Program: ISE/AISL
Award Number: 1011084
Funding Amount: 214644

Tags

Audience: Evaluators | General Public | Museum | ISE Professionals | Scientists
Discipline: Education and learning science | Geoscience and geography | Life science
Resource Type: Project Descriptions
Environment Type: Exhibitions | Games | Simulations | Interactives | Media and Technology | Museum and Science Center Exhibits | Professional Development | Conferences | Networks | Resource Centers and Networks