Bringing Visualization to Education: Designing an Out-of-This-World Museum Experience
Olga Njai, a student in the Master of Graphic & Experience Design program, is an experienced graphic designer. But her first studio in the program presented a challenge unlike any other she’d taken on before. The instructor, Associate Professor Deborah Littlejohn, tasked Njai and her classmates with creating a visual data story on the topic of their choice for the Durham Museum of Life and Science.
The catch? They’d have to design for a platform they’d never had to tackle before — a rotating sphere. Specifically, the Science On a Sphere system: a room-sized interactive globe that displays Earth science data. Developed by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it’s installed in 195 museum and science center exhibits around the world — including one in the Durham Museum of Life and Science.
u0022This project widened my understanding of what experience design can be. We had to take the physical space into account when designing and create a fully immersive experience.”
“This project widened my understanding of what experience design can be,” Njai said. “We weren’t just creating a two-dimensional digital experience on an app. We had to take the physical space into account when designing and create a fully immersive experience.”
Contextualizing Data
Science On a Sphere allows museum visitors to tap into NOAA’s 600-plus datasets and see them projected on the giant globe to learn about Earth’s land, oceans and atmosphere.
“The problem with many of NOAA’s datasets, though, is that there’s not a lot of contextualization. There isn’t a story behind the data,” Littlejohn said.
Her students’ goal was to help visitors make sense of the data through visual storytelling.
Njai and her classmates split up into four groups and each selected their own content themes. One group researched the importance of honeybees in the pollination of certain crops around the world, another researched the global resources it takes to produce a single T-shirt, while a third group created linguistics maps detailing how world events have influenced the transmission of language.
“The museum was really excited about that one because no one had thought to use Science On a Sphere to tell that kind of a story about language,” Littlejohn said.u003cbru003eu003cbru003eNjai’s group wanted to shed light on the enormous amounts of water artificial intelligence data centers use to cool their servers, focusing on ChatGPT. The exact amount depends on how complicated the prompts are and how long the responses are, but even trivial prompts result in water usage.
“My team and I thought if we made our display visually compelling, it might help people understand that a ChatGPT prompt is not the same as a Google search in terms of the environmental cost. It’s more than that,” Njai said.
The group focused on making the content appealing and straightforward for middle and high school students. They used tangible examples — five ChatGPT prompts result in using half a liter of water, for instance. They built in features to present the information in a way that would resonate with students, including a messaging interface with animated replies resembling a dialogue between ChatGPT and a user.
“Being able to customize a message in different ways for different people is design’s superpower,” Littlejohn said. “As designers, we are trying to create a bridge between science and the public.”
Bridging Gaps
The students’ projects aren’t on display at the moment — museum exhibits go through a lengthy review process and rounds of user testing before they’re approved for installation. But collaborations like these showcase NC State’s ability to help bridge gaps in science communication and strengthen education.
“Communicating science is a responsibility for us as a land-grant institution, so it’s important for students to have these types of opportunities,” Littlejohn said. “They’re not just completing projects for their portfolios. They’re accountable to a real-world client and create something meaningful — something that would help improve data and science literacy if it gets installed in the museum later on.”
Njai knew that the Master of Graphic u0026amp; Experience Design program’s emphasis on research would help her develop the skills she needs to be competitive in today’s industry. The process of designing a spherical museum display has challenged her and given her a deeper appreciation for the role of design in the world. She’s been able to see how it has the potential to touch the next generation, allowing them to understand and engage with the issues facing society.
“When kids see topics in a museum that they may not have learned about in school, I hope it makes them ask more questions and look into things that are beyond their class curriculum,” Njai said. “That’s beneficial for the future because we will need them to help solve the problems we’re discovering.”
This article first appeared in the spring 2025 issue of Designlife magazine. Explore other articles from this issue.
This post was originally published in College of Design Blog.
