INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE | MUSEUM KIOSK
ROLE
Solo UX researcher & designer
Audience
Families with children 7–10
Methods
Context
Fossil hall · Natural history museum
overview
A fossil takes a million years to form.
A museum visitor gives you about ninety seconds.
The kiosk lives in the fossil hall of a natural history museum, beside the dinosaur skeletons and dioramas. Its job is to turn an abstract, invisible, deep-time process into something a seven-year-old can grasp — and want to grasp — in the length of a single museum stop.
Fossil formation is unusually well-suited to a kiosk: the process is naturally nested and layered, and dinosaurs already spark curiosity in this age group. The strategy was to support curiosity-driven learning through clear structure, plain language, and hands-on interaction — moving from what a fossil is, to how one forms, to what types exist, and finally to a dig-it-yourself activity that reinforces all three.
85%
Can define a fossil after use (concept mastery goal)
80%
Sequence the 4 steps correctly
(process understanding goal)
3+min
Average engagement time
(ideal outcome)
85%
Complete the “Find a Fossil” dig
(interaction goal)
Minimum success thresholds were defined before testing to create measurable launch targets for the prototype.
The challenge
How do you teach an unseen, million-year process to kids in 90 seconds?
The constraints came from the audience and the context at once. The visitors are children 7–10 with little to no understanding of how fossils form, visiting with a parent who may be guiding — or distracted. The room is busy and noisy. Interactions are short (1–3 minutes). Kids are standing, at varying heights, sometimes waiting in line.
That ruled out paragraphs, deep menus, and any clever or overly academic language. The design had to use plain, action-oriented labels at a child’s reading level, large touch targets, icon-based navigation, and a structure that supported both a linear learning path for kids who follow along and free exploration for kids who jump straight to the dig. Visuals and animation were there to support the load text usually carries.
AI collaboration
I prompted an AI to respond as a 7–10-year-old visitor to pressure-test interaction ideas. It confirmed the instincts already in my plan — movement, sound, tools, a “you found it!” payoff — but the exercise reinforced that a simulated persona can’t replace real users. Audience research stayed the foundation; the AI was a reflective aid, not an authority.
Research
Card sorting to map mental models
Before structuring anything, I needed to see how users naturally group and label fossil content. I ran an open card sort in KardSort with five participants, remotely.
The content cards
Card labels were drawn from an intentions grid (topic, audience, purpose, learning outcomes) and written in plain language a 7–10-year-old could read, often using Socratic, curiosity-prompting phrasing:
How fossils form — Steps 1-4
Types of Fossils — Body · Trace · Plant
Paleontologists— The fossil scientists
I used an AI to brainstorm alternative top-level navigation label sets (more playful, more curriculum-aligned, more exploratory). Several aligned with my structure, but I made the final calls from card-sort data and instructor feedback — for example, keeping “Find a Fossil!” for its buried-treasure connotation rather than adopting every suggestion.
Insights
Four findings that shaped the architecture
Decisions & Tradeoffs
The hard calls
Naming the interactive section
Not chosen
“Interactive Excavation Simulation”
Precise and descriptive — the kind of label an AI suggests and an adult approves. But it’s clinical, long, and means nothing to a child scanning for something fun to do.
Chosen
Restructure services around customer decision points
Verb-first and curiosity-driven. Find implies hunting for buried treasure; dig names the action. Kids remember playful, task-based labels — and act on them immediately.
Fixing the fuzzy “What is a Fossil?” category
Option A
Keep all the cards, leave the overlap
Minimal effort, but ignores the strongest warning from testing. Users kept mis-sorting “how it forms” and “what it becomes,” so the confusion would survive into the live kiosk.
Option b
Define the fossil, then bridge to process
Define a fossil without re-explaining formation, and add a “See how this happens” link into How Fossils Form. Preserves the conceptual boundary while honoring the overlap users actually showed.
Hierarchy depth for a fast-paced room
Not chosen
Deep, nested menus
Tidy on paper, but every extra level is memory load. In a noisy hall with 90-second attention spans, deep paths lose kids before they reach the content.
Chosen
Shallow & wide — all four choices visible
One screen, four clear doors. Reduces cognitive load, eliminates deep navigation, and supports the quick, curiosity-led decisions real museum visitors make.
Simplifying the learning focus
Not chosen
Keep “Paleontologists” as its own main category
The card sort showed strong agreement around paleontologist content, so it could have remained a standalone section. But adding another top-level category made the kiosk feel broader than the core learning goal and shifted attention away from fossils.
Chosen
Fold paleontologist content into fossil learning
Instead of making “Paleontologists” a separate destination, I used it as supporting content inside the fossil experience. This kept the kiosk focused on what fossils are, how they form, and how visitors discover them — while still showing the role of paleontologists in context.
Information Architecture
The final blueprint keeps four distinct top-level categories — definition, process, classification, interaction — under a persistent global navigation. Each maps to a different learning mode, and each is reachable at any time, so the kiosk works as both a guided lesson and an open exhibit.
What it is
Why fossils matter
→ See how this happens
Final solution
The architecture became a touch-ready prototype. The home screen makes all four doors visible at once; content screens lead with imagery and short, plain copy; the dig activity turns the lesson into play.
Find a Fossil!
The payoff. Kids pick a tool, dig, chisel, and brush away layers, and uncover a fossil — then get a short, surprising fact and a “dig again” loop. Doing, not reading, is what makes the learning stick.
Usability Testing & Survey
Coming soon
