About

A museum is a place that stores and displays artefacts of artistic, historical, or scientific importance. Museums play an important role because they store, record, study, conserve, and display the artefacts in their collections, which make up the scientific and cultural heritage of a place. Most museums are open to the public, and they inform and entertain the public by holding exhibitions to display and tell the story of the artefacts of their collections. There are many kinds of museums, here is a small sample: art museums that house paintings, sculptures, and other works of art; natural history museums with collections from nature including plant life, and the animals, as well as fossils from extinct creatures; science museums that explain the principles of physics and the applications of technology; ethnographic museums that tell the story of an ethic group of people through their artefacts, such as dress, music, tools, and so forth. Open-air museums show artefacts that are located outdoors, for example, an historic old fort; or the fossil beds in the ground that are part of a palaeontology museum.
 

Your task

Design an open-air museum exhibition for an existing site or an imaginary one of your choice, that is educational, and that effectively and safely presents a selection of the museum’s site to its visitors. Your exhibition design concept may be for all or just a part of the museum site. For example, you may choose to design only a single part of an archaeological site; or, you may design the exhibition of the entire archaeological site. Design only the museum exhibition layout and content, such as displays and information boards and so forth. Do not design the museum buildings. Build a small-scale model to demonstrate your open-air museum exhibition. Work on this project in a team with a group of your classmates.
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The design thinking stages

Follow the five design thinking stages to ensure that you think of everything and do everything necessary in order to succeed in your design project. First, you must UNDERSTAND the design topic and the needs of the users. With that understanding, you can DECIDE what is important to your design solution and what is not so important. Then you CREATE to come up with ideas and improve them. Then you BUILD your chosen design idea in a physical form and improve it through trial-and-error. Finally, you TEST your built design idea to get the opinions of users. Use the methods from the Design Thinking for Schools website as you follow the design thinking stages.
 

Note for teachers

​​​​​​​Read the guide for teachers on Safety for the BUILD Stage for Level III to safely supervise this design project.​​​​​