What Tastes Like Home? Collaborative Research on an Interactive Response Wall

This is a technical report for the project, "What Tastes Like Home?" This research project was a collaboration of the United States Botanic Garden (USBG) and COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation (CRE). The research investigated how visitors engaged with an interactive response wall in USBG's Cultivate: Growing Food in a Changing World exhibit, which invited visitors to leave their own answers to the question, “What tastes like home?” Building on USBG team members’ observations that the response wall seemed to elicit rich personal responses, the study explored how visitors interpreted and responded to this question and how the activity contributed to feelings of inclusion within a public garden setting. Ultimately, the research aimed to identify what insights this experience might offer for designing inclusive learning environments in public gardens, as well as to demonstrate how social science research approaches can provide new perspectives on visitor engagement and learning in public gardens. This document includes an executive summary of the project, detailed technical reporting on the project's processes of planning, data collection, and analysis, findings and commentary responding to the core research questions, and a brief summarizing implications for designers of interactive response walls.