Roberto Clemente was a Latino and Black athlete and icon from the 1950s, who gave his life in service to others. I partnered with nonprofit Clemente Museum to design a virtual web experience that makes Clemente's life and legacy an example for a new generation.
The Clemente Museum hosts visits by appointment only, and its patrons are primarily original fans of Roberto Clemente, who played in the 1950s to the 1970s. The museum, to expand the demographics it appeals to, is looking to reach younger audiences and people who aren't able or willing to travel to the Pittsburgh-based museum.
To engage younger audiences, we built an immersive web experience that delivers both rich storytelling and interaction. To ensure the deliverable was compatible with web browsers, which supported our client's request for accessibility, I advocated for lightweight 3D scenes that would be portable from Unity using WebGL.
To envision a virtual experience that captures the life and work of Roberto Clemente, our team knew we needed to understand how his story is told today. What makes the Clemente Museum, and similar experiences, compelling and engaging? We wanted to understand how artifacts live in museums, and how people connect to the stories behind them.
With our primary research, we saw that the most fundamental aspect to our type of museum experience is rich, relatable storytelling and discussion. To quickly observe how people engage with stories in museum-like virtual spaces, our team turned to the popular video game known for its building—Minecraft!
In regards to feedback—I found getting critique often and early from our client was critical—after some early missteps (featured in the isometric prototype) our team organized weekly meetings to share our progress. I learned I also needed to communicate my designs better, by noticing when stakeholders are giving vague or inactionable feedback and responding with specific questions. Offering prototypes at the right fidelity to elicit the appropriate level of feedback is key, and I gained a sense for that during this project.
In design, I learned the initial sketches and prototypes of the web experience were exciting and ambitious, but didn't offer enough affordances to create intuitive navigation for users. Instead of hiding content behind multiple layers, making artifacts of Clemente's life secondary to the world, the final prototype leverages them to populate the virtual space itself so that users can directly manipulate and explore 3D objects with universal interactions like click and drag or hover.