A six-chapter touch table that turns food-system science into something an eleven year old can play with, decide on, and remember.
Children do not learn from data. They learn from play. So every fact in this table sits behind something you touch, compare, or watch first.
Food-system science is statistical, contested and abstract. In a museum it competes with everything else in the room.
The audience starts at age eleven, arrives in groups, and gives an installation a few seconds before walking on.
Skansen's research archive held the substance but no narrative: hundreds of figures with no order, no hook and no takeaway.
A touch table has no manual and no onboarding. Whatever it teaches has to be learned by touching it.
Read the Skansen article archive with their educators and scientists, and pulled out the handful of numbers that actually change a visitor's mind.
Turned those numbers into six chapters with one idea each, and a start screen that offers three ways in: explore, guided auto-play, or an idle attract loop.
Designed the touch grammar: large tap targets, one level of disclosure per tap, filters that never empty the screen, and a way back from anywhere.
Built the comparison scatter plot, impact dimensions and the Planetary Health Plate so children compare foods by touching them, not by reading axes.
Storyboarded and animated the food-waste film so the scale of the problem lands before any statistic appears.
Walked the flow with Skansen educators and floor staff, then adjusted reading level, tap sizes and pacing on their feedback.
The research was not user interviews first, it was content first. Skansen's scientists knew the science; my job was to find which parts of it survive contact with a distracted eleven year old, and how the table should behave so nobody needs an instruction.
| Role | Tools used | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Skansen scientists | Research archive, article set | Scientific accuracy, what may and may not be claimed |
| Skansen educators | School programmes | Reading level, curriculum fit, group behaviour |
| Visualiseringscenter C team | Touch table hardware, exhibition floor | Attract loop, durability, throughput |
| Yin He, design collaborator | Figma, After Effects | Visual system and animation production |
“If it takes a paragraph to explain, they have already walked away.”
“The number has to be true, but the story is what they take home.”
School classes crowd the table three or four at a time. A single-focus interface creates a queue and the rest lose interest.
Design need · Wide, forgiving tap targets and content that reads from the side of the table, not only head-on.
A percentage means nothing without a comparison. Visitors understood impact only when two foods sat next to each other.
Design need · Comparison as the primary interaction, with the number as the reward for comparing.
Standing visitors skip framing text and touch whatever moves. The instructional model had to be replaced by an attract loop.
Design need · Three entry paths: free exploration, an auto-play guided tour, and an idle highlight loop that demonstrates the interaction.
Food waste only registered once visitors saw it: cut fruit, expired packets, full bins, at scale.
Design need · Open the food-waste chapter with animation, then reveal the figures behind it.
Visitors asked the same closing question: so what should I do? Without an answer the visit ends as guilt, not as agency.
Design need · A short quiz that converts the chapter into one concrete personal action.
The impact data varies by production method and region, and the scientists would not let it read as a diet prescription.
Design need · Visible caveats in plain language, framed as an overview rather than advice.
Food System and Environment sets the frame. Food System in the Past grounds it in Skansen's own farmsteads. Environmental Impact Data lets you compare. Food Waste delivers the emotional hit. Dietary Shift shows the plate. What Can We Do turns it into a choice. Any chapter works as a first chapter, because visitors never start at the beginning.
The scatter plot is the heart of the table. Tap foods to open them, switch the axis between CO2, land use, water use and biodiversity, filter by category, or pick a ready-made story if you would rather be guided. Every state keeps something on screen, so a child cannot filter their way into an empty view.
Food Waste opens with the animation, then unfolds into causes, scale and household tips. The Planetary Health Plate is a plate you tap, not a chart you study. What Can We Do closes with a WWF film and a short quiz.
Children reach the Food Waste chapter and get a short animated film before a single number appears. It runs on the table and plays here on loop. The script came out of the data analysis: I pulled the key figures from Skansen's archive, decided which four could carry a story, and storyboarded them into four scenes that move from problem to scale to personal impact to action. After the film, the same numbers reappear as data visualisation, and the chapter ends with the quiz.
A montage of cut fruit, expired products and leftovers. We throw away too much food.
A global map animates the tonnage wasted every year, so the number arrives as a picture first.
One person surrounded by empty packaging. The global figure becomes a household figure.
A balanced plate and a recycling bin: reduce, reuse, recycle. The quiz picks up from here.
This was a collaboration, and the case study should say so plainly. The science and the source material came from Skansen's scientists and educators. Yin He and I worked as a two-person design team inside Visualiseringscenter C, splitting the work by strength and reviewing each other's output daily rather than working in separate lanes.
Content analysis of the Skansen archive, narrative and information architecture for the six chapters, interaction model and touch grammar, data visualisation design (impact comparison, plate, waste figures), the food-waste storyboard and motion direction, and the flow walkthroughs with educators.
Co-designed the visual language and chapter layouts with me, produced illustration and animation assets alongside my storyboards, and built out screen variants for chapters we had scoped together. We divided chapters between us, then swapped for critique so the whole table stayed one system rather than two styles.
Provided the research archive, verified every figure and caveat, and set the reading level and curriculum fit for visitors from age eleven. They also vetoed anything that read as dietary advice rather than an overview.
Touch table hardware, exhibition context and the attract-loop requirement, plus the floor testing that shaped tap sizes, text sizes and pacing.
In the food-waste chapter the film runs first and the figures follow. Reversing that order lost visitors in testing walkthroughs: they read one number and left.
Explore freely, take the guided auto-play tour, or let the idle loop show you what a tap does. Nobody has to be told how the table works.
Impact is only meaningful relative to something else, so the scatter plot is built for two foods at a time, with axis switching instead of a legend to decode.
Filters and category toggles always leave content on screen. On a walk-by table an empty result reads as a broken machine.
The impact data varies by production method and region. That is stated on the chapter itself, in a sentence a child can read, not buried in a credits screen.
The final chapter is a film and a quiz. Visitors leave with one action they picked themselves, which is the only outcome the educators cared about.
Success for this table is behavioural: do visitors stop, do they reach chapter three, and can they name one action at the end.
Educators walked the full flow before build and set the bar for reading level and pacing; their notes drove the final text pass.
Every figure on screen traces back to a Skansen source and was signed off by their scientists.
If instrumented further, the next measures are dwell time per chapter, quiz completion rate, and which comparison foods children choose most.
The installation runs at Wadströms Exploranation Laboratory, Visualiseringscenter C, as a public exhibit rather than a concept.
Children move through it by playing: tap a food, compare it, watch a short film, then answer a quiz that turns the visit into a personal decision.
Skansen's research became a narrative the floor staff can teach from, and the visual system carried into supporting exhibition material.
The quiz closes the loop: visitors leave with one thing they can change, not with a statistic they will forget.
The hardest edit was subtraction. The archive could have filled twenty chapters; the table works because it holds six, each with one idea.
Designing for children raised the bar for everyone. Larger targets, shorter sentences and comparison-first interaction made the table better for adults too.
Working two-up with Yin He taught me to hand off unfinished work early. Daily critique kept one visual system across chapters we designed separately.
Next time I would test the attract loop on the floor sooner. It is the single element that decides whether anyone touches the table at all.
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