Search for: All records

IntroductionThis paper describes an initial phase of research to inform the design of Change YOUR Game—an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH) that aims to promote visitors’ inventiveness in STEM and in other life domains. The exhibition’s content focused on the history of inventions and innovations in sports. The research was framed by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) and by a set of design principles for promoting visitors’ agentic identity exploration: The PRESS Principles. MethodsFive data collection sessions engaged participants in a virtual, simulated visit to an early rendition of the exhibition. Diverse groups of participants were prompted to consider the self-relevance of the exhibition content to their identities and how they have been and can be inventive in their lives. ResultsFour themes captured participants’ museum visitor role identities, varied readiness to engage in identity exploration of their inventiveness, and how these provided affordances and hindrances to participants’ engagement in identity exploration in the context of the simulated visit. The themes served as bases for design recommendations. DiscussionThe study highlights the potential of the DSMRI and PRESS design principles to address conceptual and methodological challenges of research that aims to inform environmental design of a context that is not yet in existence and that will be relatively fixed. The findings suggest recommendations for design as well as theoretical insights about museum visitor role identities and the contexts that may promote visitors’ active and agentic engagement in exploring their identities. 

This paper describes the conceptual framework, methodology, and findings from an initial phase of research to inform the design of an exhibition at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (NMAH)on the history of invention and innovation in sports. Organized by the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, the goal of the exhibition is to promote inventiveness among visitors, with a particular emphasis on those from groups underrepresented in the NMAH visitor population and in the invention ecosystem: adolescent girls, African American Boys, and people with disabilities. The research is framed by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity(DSMRI)—an integrative, complex dynamic system model of identity, motivation, and action—and by a set of design principles for promoting people’s agentic identity exploration. The paper describes the conceptual challenges posed by a situative identity perspective for research that aims to inform environmental design of a context that is not yet in existence and that will become relatively fixed. The paper also describes the conceptual rationale, methodology, and first phase findings from experiential focus groups and interviews with participants from the target audiences, and their implications for the exhibition’s design. 

This study examined identity processes among early-mid adolescent girls as part of an experience designed to promote their identity exploration around being inventive. Data were collected through virtual focus groups where participants assumed the role of a museum visitor in an exhibition about inventiveness in sports. Data analysis was guided by the Dynamic Systems Model of Role Identity (DSMRI) and explicated the participants’ beliefs, goals, self-perceptions, and action possibilities around being inventive in their lives.