Designing for and identifying plural goals in a science museum game exhibit

Abstract

Science museums are often interactive spaces where a variety of visitors engage with exhibits in diverse ways. While trying to support participants? behavior in ways that make intuitive sense for these behaviors in a museum context, these exhibits need to support interests and participation in forms that are meaningfully diverse - to make domains accessible to learners belonging to groups minoritized in those domains. In this paper, we present an interactive computational thinking exhibit designed to foster a multiplicity of goals and participatory behaviors. We also present preliminary analysis on how we can use play data to delineate the pursuit of different goals mediated through different pursuits. We also find care to be a uniquely valuable aesthetic motivator in gameplay, often overlooked in common design frameworks - with potential to expand perspectives on computing and combat inequity among computing learners.