AI Experiments & Creative Practice

This page documents experiments using generative AI as a creative partner in exhibit design at the California Academy of Sciences—work that began not from a mandate but from curiosity, and a desire to prototype more fluidly across formats.

Working with exhibit design and content teams, I’ve encountered real resistance to these tools—and I understand why. The concerns about resource use and authorship are legitimate. What surprised me was how much they freed up space for the more human parts of the work.

A few projects where that showed up:

Nature Chain Puzzle — A concept for a daily micro-puzzle game rooted in systems thinking: one small human action triggers a chain of ecological consequences, and players build the sequence. The starting point is always something mundane—a french fry dropped in a parking lot, a seagull that spots it, a gull colony that follows. The mechanic makes visible what's usually invisible: how ordinary moments ripple through ecosystems. AI tools including Lovable and Claude are part of the prototyping process, helping move the concept from idea to working demo without a dedicated development team.

Creativity exercises — When our division transitioned from “Experience” to ”Innovation,“ I wanted lightweight ways to build some creative muscle with the exhibit design team. I developed a series of bite-size brainstorming activities with 2D and 3D designers over time, always grounded in the logic of the natural world: what if extinct species made a dramatic comeback, and visitors had to decide where they reappear? What if visitors treated migratory monarchs like a K-pop fandom? The weirder the prompt, the more useful the result. I also built a custom AI tool to generate new ones on demand: drop in a topic, and it surfaces the underlying logic or tension and turns it into a creative exercise.

Off Script — Everything is conversational now—how people search, how they learn, how they ask questions. Exhibit interpretation has largely stayed outside that shift. Off Script is a proposed pilot attempting to bring it in. ”Nature Talk Radio” was an early version of the idea: an audio guide where museum specimens host their own radio shows, giving voice to objects that usually just sit there. Off Script is where that impulse is heading. A small sign in front of the taxidermy juvenile giraffe in the East Hall. You call or text a number, and the giraffe responds. Not a docent, not a tour. The specimen, in first person, speaking for itself.