The Immersive Museum of Children’s Books is a design studio created for Visual Communication students at UTS. In the professional practice segment of the course, students choose out of a set of briefs created by industry professionals, exploring a range of design practices. The focus of my studio was to design an interactive experience around your favourite children’s book, to live in the Immersive Museum of Children’s Books. With storytelling at the core, students honed skills in conceptual development, user experience and interface design. The course ran over 6 weeks, in 2020 and 2021.
Course development, teaching, website design and illustration.
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.”
- Muriel Rukeyser.
Storytelling is arguably the most important tradition that humans possess; a transfer of knowledge teaching us about all aspects of life. Children’s books are unique in their storytelling. In a limited number of pages they enable deep emotional connection, have universal, intergenerational appeal and stay with us as we grow up.
The brief is to design an interactive experience around your favourite title, to live in a ‘room’ in the Immersive Museum of Children’s Books. Your room will bring an aspect of the story to life, connecting with an intergenerational audience through experience design.
Due to Covid-19 and lockdowns, the course was taught remotely. I designed the course as a shared workspace, to bring some fun into remote collaboration. Over the 6 weeks, the students developed their concepts to create wireframes, prototypes, interaction diagrams, and graphic visualisations.
The student projects are a delightful collection of experiences, worthy of a museum. I designed a website to showcase their work and to link out to their portfolios.
Take a look:
Course Coordinator: Nicky Hardcastle
Course design and website: Nicci Hurwitz
Web Development: Ros Skinner
