Summary

The Science Museum of Minnesota is non-profit museum located in St. Paul, MN where over 100,000 students attend field trips annually.

The business’ goals were: to book more hands-on workshops for an up-charge, better utilize museum space, staff, and resources to offset expenses, provide programs that Minnesota educators find valuable, relevant, and accessible.

I spent nine months figuring out: what teachers want and need from a museum workshop, how they make decisions about field trip options, who are the other external stakeholders in the decision-making process, what other local institutions are offering, what standards-related STEM topics Science Museum could cover better than anyone else, how I could develop the curriculum and train staff while staying on budget, and how to make the booking process easier for internal and external stakeholders.

The result was a new program with: a menu of ten hands-on Learning Lab workshops whose topics, content, and skills were based on Minnesota state science standards and exhibits in the Museum. The process of creating the program also resulted in a more efficient booking process, and a more marketable product for both the visitors and the business.

Please click the slideshow above to learn more about my Human Centered Design process for this project.