Home / Projects / Rubin Museum: Understanding the Mandala Lab Visitor Experience
A study of an interactive museum exhibition, examining emotional shifts over the course of a visit and the impact of design
The Mandala Lab, “an interactive space for social, emotional, and ethical learning,” opened at the Rubin Museum of Art in October 2021 and is set to remain on view until October 2031, with the potential to create traveling versions of the exhibition in the future. The space offers a unique opportunity for visitors to explore emotion through the lens of Buddhist principles, inviting curiosity through five “thought-provoking, playful experiences.”
The objective of this evaluation, conducted alongside classmates Melissa Bowden Tyra and Sean Gao, was to examine the visitor journey throughout the Mandala Lab. We aimed to examine both emotional shifts over the course of a visit, and the impact of the exhibit’s design.
Initially, we had planned to focus on timing and tracking visitors. We ended up devising a novel hybrid research approach where we intercepted and interviewed visitors about their tracking sheets in order to understand not only how they moved through the exhibit, but what they were thinking as they did so.
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Pratt Institute - INFO-693
Audience Research & Evaluation
March - May 2023
8 weeks
User ResearchAudience Evaluation