Monsters at the Museum

One of our favorite parts of a project is the research phase (depending on the day though. Brainstorming sometimes takes the cake). There's just something about keeping an open mind, hitting the road and searching for inspiration. The greatest pay-off is when you get an idea that leads you in a totally, yet better, direction than where you thought you were headed.

One of our recent projects called for the following:

• new and innovative design
• target audience were pre-tween kids
• interactive elements of play

The rest was up to us! We love when a client tells us, "We don't know exactly what we want, but we know we need to be innovative and push it further than where we are now." It takes a lot to identify you're doing well today, but you don't want to be in anyone's rear-view mirror tomorrow.

So forward we looked and pushed. We did our standard competitive and benchmark analysis and searched the internet for amazingness, but felt we were still missing something. We like to pull inspiration from unexpected places, so we headed to The Museum of Science and Industry here in Chicago. We played the role of observers as we watched families with their kids interact with the displays and noticed what they gravitated towards and how they reacted. We took note of shapes, materials, function and how technology either played a main or supporting role in the exhibit.

After all was said and done, we left feeling energized (and a little enlightened as well) and ready to rock! Unfortunately we can't show the end result since the project is still in development, but we and our client are extremely happy with where we landed. :) Till next time folks!