Working on India’s first interactive & immersive museum for children
A child’s curiosity has immense potential to bring about positive change in the world, but most children in Mumbai do not have access to the support, opportunity, or inspiration they need to fully develop their potential.
Through this article, I intend to elaborate on a space, first of its kind in India — The Museum Of Solutions (MuSo). I will be advancing towards how MuSo was born and what it stands for. I briefly touch upon various methods of research & design that are carried out at MuSo which we will be going in detail of through a series of blogs in the coming months.
What is The Museum Of Solutions?
Children are naturally curious, and their desire to know and understand the world develops as they grow older (Kettle and Ross, 2018).
Museum of Solutions (MuSo) is an experimental children’s museum coming up in Mumbai (Bombay? Mumbai?). The space aims at empowering children to build a better world through hands-on experiences. The purpose of MuSo revolves around inspiring, enabling and empowering children to bring meaningful change in the world together, today.
At MuSo we’re a small, growing, interdisciplinary team consisting of designers, architects, educators, economists and explorers (aren’t we all?). A group of passionate individuals coming from diverse institutions across the world. We are working towards building the museum by utilising our varied skill sets. Our extended family (advisers, mentors) are from all over the world — yes we make time difference work. Educators like Shaheen Mistri and Kiran Bir Sethi are some of the oldest friends of MuSo.
Design @ MuSo
The design team is built on strong principles and three conceptual pillars that guide the philosophy, direction and potential activities found in the museum.
Boldly - Child led: A child’s own curiosity is the key to unlocking transformative experiences.
Radically Inclusive: Diversity is a driver for empathy-based experiences.
Rooted to Reality: The world around us is the inspiration to learn from, experiment within and our sandbox for making change.
Before we design an experience, program or even a tiny experiment, the pillars are something we add as a part of our design consciously.
Various generative and participatory design research methods have been used right from MuSo’s conception. We view our stakeholders — children as one of our greatest creative contributors along the design journey. Along with them we regularly interact with parents and educators to understand how they envision learning and education to evolve. We believe in the potential of children. MuSo is a space boldly child led, and that reflects in our design process. We allow children to walk up to us and say “hey, I think this isn't working” or “this is how you can do this better”.
That’s why we consult a panel of 25–30 children, from schools all over Mumbai. These children meet us once a month and provide us with feedback on different aspects of the Museum. We incorporate their feedback in the design and content of the museum. We are in the process of expanding this cohort and testing ideas with a wider and more diverse audience.
Since we’re a multidisciplinary team, everyone has pretty wild methods of carrying out the same task. For eg. As a textile designer, my first step is market study. Understanding how my end user (children in the case of MuSo) interacts with the textile product (in this case — the space). Children’s panels at MuSo, were my version of textile market study (except children are so much tougher to please) where I took time to understand what engages children, things that excite them, things that don’t and how every single child is different. As a textile designer, I’m used to following a solution based approach to almost everything. When I create a product or an experience, its functionality grows onto design. For example, the woven structure for outdoor and indoor seating differs, so does the fabric structure of a 6 year old and 20 year old. While creating a museum for children the tools of engagement differ (much like the fabric structure, if that makes sense?)
With the diverse skill set that everyone on the team brings, everyone is a part of a certain step in the design process. As a designer I bring users into my process, I analyse and synthesise feedback that helps me create better design. The architects bring in a sense of space and realism while our educators bring in content expertise. There are some days as designers, we HAVE to step away from idealism (what we may call the divergent stage) to realism (the convergent stage) because that too is a part of the process.
How does a textile graduate work on research and exhibit design?
I suppose this is where I introduce myself (should have done that 3 paragraphs ago, no?). I graduated early last year (a physical convocation and everything) from The National Institute of Design majoring in Textile Design. A question I’m asked one too many times is how a textile designer ended up on the design team of an upcoming children’s museum, and here’s how.
I completed my thesis in 2019, which to cut short revolved around the interconnected nature of coral reefs, textile craft and math. Strange. During my thesis project a lot of my research revolved around life in water & all its systems (duh) and I discovered an instant love for the oceans.
At this point all I really wanted was for someone to pay me to study marine life (you know how delusional you are when you just graduate college?). When I heard about MuSo (we called it MOS back then) I couldn’t help but think of all the different ways I could grow in a space like MuSo. On getting the job one of my first projects at MuSo was the study of life underwater for an exhibit that was inspired by water related UN Sustainability Goals. I think that’s where it all began. This is where I used research methods I’d adapted during my education in textiles. After about 1 year and some months, I have stepped into several roles. I have worked on research and exhibits design, workshops, programmes and sometimes I put my illustrator hat on.
I think that’s the beauty of MuSo — It gives you that freedom and space to try new things, and empowers you to do more. The freedom to learn and grow with a team of explorers that aren’t afraid of tags, disciplines/majors or boundaries is what’s continuously challenging me. Was the switch easy? No. Did I fail during the process? Hell yes. Were there nights I felt incapable? Of course — but MuSo is a safe space where I was given the chance to learn from failure and it was okay to make mistakes. You learn, unlearn pretty much everyday and that’s one of the many things we are going to be talking about through our upcoming blogs. Through MuSo I learnt about issues I have gratitude towards, things I never knew about me and my environment. We’re going to dive into our principles, processes and various design research methods we explore. We are so excited to share, what’s been our world for the past two years — you might want to stick around (hehe)
Leave us some claps, leave us some love and we’ll be right back.
