I observed several interesting events in the museum. One is the virtual character animation. The device is able to create a virtual character that mimics the motion of the person stands in front of it. The user can also interact with the objects in the virtual world. I personally enjoyed it but I observed different behavior from children. Usually, children were initially attracted by it since the character on the screen was interesting. They were also attracted since they can see the characters doing the same thing as they did. But they didn’t stay longer; instead, the parents were more into the machine. Another device is a pulley that sends a ball to a high track, and the ball follows the track and moves on the ceiling. I saw a child playing it with his dad. There’s a significant difference in their reaction to the device. The child was focusing on the pulley, he was really into dragging the pulley and sending the ball up. However, his dad was interested in the ball moving in the ceiling. He tried to tell his son to watch the ball, but the child kept focusing on the pulley. Another one is a wall with lights. Literally, no children were there. Even us didn’t figure out what does it do. So children showed no interest in that machine.

According to my observation, I think that children might be more interested in things that have direct interaction with them as well as allow them to accomplish certain goals. For example, the kid was attracted by the pulley because he can physically touch the pulley and use it to send the ball up. The latter motion of the ball doesn’t have any direct connection with him. On the other hand, the virtual character machine attracted the children’s attention initially because the characters were doing the same thing as the children did. However, the machine actually has a significant delay when presenting the motion, making it really hard to interact with the objects in the virtual world. Thus, the children might feel it too hard to achieve something, which made them leave soon.

I think the museum presents quite a lot of interesting devices that allow children to explore technology. However, the experience I had there showed that children don’t think as we do. Some devices indeed attracted their attention, while some didn’t. So cool technology is not the key point to attract their attention. It’s important to embed the technology into a very interactable form.