Nehru Planetarium is a museum which is situated in the center of Delhi in Teen Murti Bhawan, earlier the residence of India’s first Prime Minister, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru and now a museum in his memory. Conscious of the fact that an understanding of the spirit and method of science was crucial for children to become responsible citizens, Nehru liked every opportunity to be provided to them in this endeavor; it’s is a museum dedicated to the purpose. The strength of the planetarium lies in its live interactions and programs related to space technology and astronomy. The Planetarium is always active with programs for school and college students and for amateur astronomers.

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The Planetarium provides details about Universe, Inter Planetary structure and measurement of time. The entire area can be divided into two major zones one is the freely movable space which the exhibition area and the other area is the dome for the screening of the show “Beginning of Universe”.

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With latest development in gesture based interaction, in the future, keyboard and mouse or any other tangible medium may not be needed to interact with the computer. The medium of conveying information would be interactive installation and information visualization, hence there is a need to study and design gestural interfaces for these installations (where the target group i.e., children in this case) in the museum space.

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My goal through the project was to learn and envision the gesture based interaction in a museum space. In the project I tried study and understand the ways in which the information is delivered in playful ways making it entertaining for the target audience. Furthermore, I have explored several technologies which can be used and integrated to bring together such an experience in the museum space.

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The project started from the understanding the requirement, moving further towards researching the user base and purpose of the informative game in the museum space; and then moving on towards the type of interaction needed for the game. Once the game content was decided, the game flow and the elements of the game system.

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The later part of the project went through the rigorous prototyping and software tools used to accomplish the game making. Besides covering the different possibilities of the technologies being used and the shortcomings. The adaptation of the gestures for the game throughout the prototyping has been an integral part of the entire prototyping.

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Overall, the entire process of the making the game was a great learning experience which was a mix of user study, design, technology and loads of hard work!