Connect-to-Connected Worlds

Connect-to-Connected Worlds is web-based tablet support designed for facilitators, researchers and visitors to the New York Hall of Science’s Connected Worlds immersive simulation exhibit. The analytics dashboard design involves an architecture to scrape live data from the exhibit while it is in use, deliver it to a database, extract useful features from the raw data and visualize the results in an on-demand fashion on tablets carried within the exhibit. These live, dynamic data visualizations can help visitors understand how their manipulations and actions affect the simulated ecosystem’s diversity and sustainability. 

We used visitors’ interaction data to provide reflection opportunities to the visitors, we further worked with the visitors to understand the effect of data-driven reflective formative feedback, delivered by the dashboard, on visitors’ collective actions in Connected Worlds. We used case-study approach, with two visitor groups, one group reflected with the data-driven tool and other only verbally reflected their experiences. The group who reflected using the data-based feedback were able to more playfully and consciously modify their strategies to engage with the exhibit.

Related Publication:

Mallavarapu, A.,Lyons, L., Uzzo, S., Thompson, W., Levy-Cohen, R., & Slattery, B. (2019, April). Connect-to-Connected Worlds: Piloting a Mobile, Data-Driven Reflection Tool for an Open-Ended Simulation at a Museum. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (p. 7). ACM                                                                                                                                                                                                              Download