Bringing Roberto Clemente's story to the 21st Century.
A way to inspire the next generation of athletes, siblings, parents, and leaders.
I worked as the project manager and UX designer for this eight-month-long project as part of the MHCI program at Carnegie Mellon University.
Roberto Clemente was a famous Puerto Rican baseball player who played for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1954 to 1972.
His story has inspired people across geography and time, including Duane Rieder who founded a museum in his honor.
However, with the pandemic came a rough patch for the museum, which prompted them to look into entering the digital era.
The default definition states that a museum is "a building in which objects of historical, scientific, artistic, or cultural interest are stored and exhibited."
There lies our first problem: removing the physical aspect of a museum.
After user interviews with our target millennial museum-goers, we found that social norms extend into virtual spaces.
People think "look, don't touch".
There lies our second problem: giving back autonomy and the safety to explore.
So we turned to games where the user is the main character, hoping that an isometric platform would bring a good mix of reality and imagination.
Users liked roaming through different eras and locations and customizing their experience.
However, some people just don't like games, especially when there is a learning period.
Earlier affinity diagrams revealed that thematic stories resonate with people. Latin communities see their culture, baseball lovers see a star athlete, and fathers see a role model.
And thus, we decided to pivot our design.
We quickly sketched 5 different directions and used survey data to land us on a timeline-based experience which gave the stories a foundation.
Within these pages, you can find audio or video clips, newspaper clippings, interviews with the museum director, and more.
You can imagine yourself in Roberto Clemente's living quarters or in his shoes as his makes his 3000th hit, a major feat in baseball!
3D artifact pages call on themes present in Roberto Clemente's life: his Puerto Rican culture, racism he faced in the mid-late 90's, his athletic achievements, and his passion for philanthropy.
We started 2021 with the goal to "envision experiences with artifacts, stories & people associated with Roberto Clemente that transcend boundaries of time, space & physical location...[that] inspires the next generation of community leaders and athletes.”
By the end of this project, my whole team was inspired to be better designers and engineers as well as better people.
By bringing the museum into the 21st Century, we hope to bring Roberto Clemente and Duane Rieder's story to as many people as possible.
