"Child as the measure of all things": the body as a referent in designing a museum exhibit to understand the nanoscale

The nanoscale, despite being something "present" in our everyday life, is actually an abstract concept given the impossibility of having a direct perception of it. This article presents the design process and analysis of an interactive exhibit called "NanoZoom" for a temporary exhibition for the science museum of Barcelona. The goal of the exhibit was to help users understand how small objects are in the nanoscale by designing a fullbody interactive experience. The hypothesis behind the design of the system was based on the idea that our body is our constant referent to allow us to understand issues of scale, proportions, distances, etc. Hence, taking the body of the user as a referent should help users better understand how small objects in the nanoscale are. The approach was based on a contemporary view on the Vitruvian Man in fullbody interaction; i.e. based on modern theories that claim that embodied interaction can foster a better learning of our environment. Experimental assessment was carried out with 64 children, comparing the fullbody interactive experience with a desktop adaptation of it. Results showed better performance on children's memorability and classification of objects (ranging from the size of centimeters to the nanoscale) for those who used the fullbody experience with respect to those in the desktop system.

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