Designing for Data With Ask Dr. Discovery: Facilitating Museum Evaluation With Real-Time Data Mining

• In Event: New Developments in Learning Technologies

Abstract

Ask Dr. Discovery is an NSF-funded study addressing the pressing need for affordable, ongoing, large-scale museum evaluation while exploring ways to encourage museum visitors to engage deeply with exhibit content.
We are developing and implementing a mobile app featuring: 1) a virtual scientist called Dr. Discovery (Dr. D) for use by museum visitors that doubles as a data-gatherer and 2) an analytics portal to be mined by museum staff and researchers. With museum partners, we are developing Dr. D as a platform for STEM informal education, research, and for data-driven decision making by museum staff.
In this paper, we describe our design of the Dr. D app and data analytics, and describe findings from initial user testing.

Authors

• Brian C. Nelson, Arizona State University

• Catherine D.D. Bowman, Raytheon DSIO/NASA JPL

• Judd Bowman, Arizona State University

• Jared Korinko

• Ivan Fernandez

• Margaret Hufford Hufford

• Rohit Iyengar

• Itxier Meziani

• Kyle Rogers, Arizona State University

• Dheeraj Yennam

• Kathy Eastman

• Sari Custer