Every year I work with talent graduate students as interns from both Teacher’s College, Columbia University and from New York University’s newly rebranded Learning Technology and Experience Design program. They all have played an integral role within my work for over 15 years and I love the opportunity to mentor such talented people at such a crucial stage in their career development.

Most recently, one of those interns was Yiran Ma, from Teacher’s College. I invited her to write a blog post, to be shared here, about her recent experience working with me on the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. Enjoy!

I am Yiran Ma, responsible for the Seltzer Timeline & Family History section in the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. We spent nearly four months going through the stages of on-site visits, research, graphic design prototype, finding suitable materials and making a budget, and installation. And it’s a meaningful experience to see the project growing from sketch to completion.

When I joined the project with Barry, the first thing we did was conduct an on-site visit to Brooklyn Seltzer Museum. During this visit, I met Alex Gomberg, who is responsible for daily operations and listened to his needs for the Seltzer Timeline & Family History section. I also measured the length and width of the exhibition space so I could have things to refer to when I later did the design. 

After that, I began to do research related to the history of seltzer by reading the book “Seltzertopia” and searching on the Internet for more detailed information. Barry and I worked together to select the 22 most important milestones along the seltzer history and decided to have a separate section to document Gomberg’s family history related to seltzers. Because the timeline we designed was 91 inches above the ground, we shortened the sentences on milestones to make sure audiences could read the words clearly from a distance.

For visual assets not published on public domains, Barry helped to reach out to the owners through email to get permissions for their use. Meanwhile, I began to search for some examples of timeline designs in museums to form some potential design options. With 22 milestones and design options documented, Barry and I held a meeting with Alex to get his thoughts on the design and approval of seltzer history content. At this point, everything went smoothly.

The first challenge came when I entered the graphic design stage, where we needed to find a more professional graphic designer to collaborate on the project. Luckily, we found one after searching and comparing people’s abilities throughout the week. I introduced him (Jacky Wu, a fellow student) to the current stage of the project and the work plan and deadlines. I would ask him about his progress at least once a week to ensure he was on the right track and if he needed additional support from me.

I realized that we needed to revisit the Brooklyn Seltzer Museum to get more precise measurements and test out several prototypes to see which is better and determine the font size. This visit was so important that it helped us change our original wave design of the timeline into a horizontal design due to the limited height we could use. It also let us detail the font and image size that were most suitable to use for the project.

Then, the second challenge came when I needed to find the most suitable materials to realize the design. I researched and called several printing companies. By comparing the functions and prices of different materials, I found that wall decals, vinyl cuts, and Sintra boards were the most suitable materials to use. However, because Sintra boards could only be cut into rectangular shapes, we had to modify our design from circles to rectangles and from round to sharp edges. In addition, we used magnets to add interactions to the project so that audiences can lift a flap to reveal the information underneath. And using magnets saves the project cost as well. I would suggest others who might be involved in design projects in the future research materials and their prices at an earlier stage and produce design more efficiently with limitations of materials in mind.

In the first week of May, we began our final installation. The materials we chose were wall decals and vinyl cuts, which meant it might be difficult to install by ourselves for the first time. However, after consulting with the printing office about the installation fee, the costs exceeded our expectations. A lot. When we met with Alex and brought up this expensive, he said he could help us install them. Therefore, we decided to install by ourselves.

It was a hard and challenging process that we needed to always pay attention to the details. One unexpected thing that happened during the installation was that previously I designed the timeline based on the measurements I’d made. However, this time, we found that the measurements were not that correct, which caused some problems with the distance between milestones. So, we had to adjust the arrangement of the timeline a little bit to ensure it did not interfere with the door.

Although the final outcome was not the exact one I’d imagined previously, I still felt really proud when seeing things being built up from 0 to 1. The rest of the pieces were installed more smoothly than I thought and luckily, nothing was destroyed. Installing materials by ourselves was a really memorable experience!

On May 6th, we held an opening ceremony at Brooklyn Seltzer Museum to celebrate all the projects we’ve made. It was a great experience to see people come and find our project to be interesting, especially for the interactive section. And it was good to see all the other projects filling this museum space, such as 3D models, posters, interactive puzzles, and videos. Everyone enjoyed spending time listening to what we made and drinking egg cream as much as they want. Highly recommend trying the egg cream! 

To sum things up, I’ve learned a lot through this experience. I learned how to conduct research to learn a new area quickly, how to communicate with stakeholders and team members more effectively, how to do project management to ensure timely delivery of all items, and how to deal with unexpected situations. This is such a unique and fruitful internship experience that I will definitely remember it for a long time!

Thanks to Barry who supports me all the time. Thanks to Alex who responded to all of my requests. And thanks to Jacky who served as a graphic designer and helped me design the timeline in a good-looking way.