Techniquest Trip assignment

The techniquest visit began with a tour of each of the exhibits situated in both the main floor and the more advanced upper level .I found all of the exhibits visually and athstetically pleasing for children and small adult's . I found myself moving from machine to machine frantically like a small child, because of instinctual curiosity did not know what some machines did before reading any instructions so it was merely by trial and error that aided me in my HCI (human and computer interaction).
After some time spent interacting and analyzing others using the exhibits I found that eight out of ten children aged 10-12 didn't read any instructions that where displayed on each of the excepts the few that did read before using the exhibits reacted the same way as the children that didn't read them.
The use of trial and error with cognitive memory seemed to be the way in which every child approached each exibit.Applying knowledge from prior experiences in life and changing the preference of that object,or experience helped in accomplishing each task which was then easily repeated due to this way of learning.

After some consideration I decided to pick a musical exhibit and a question based exhibit.

Musical pipes
The musical device was situated in the upper floor where all of the more advanced exhibits where stationed,the design is very traditional in regards to instrumental but uses contemporary materials such as glass with sensors situated in the rim of the glass which is touch sensitive and changes color once touched. Alongside the musical pipes where a set of flat pads to hit the top of the pipes.
The aim of the device is to teach children to use hand and eye co-ordination and to also use color to rejoins which pipe to hit next, so its a learning process which is repeated until the user gets it right in which they can move onto the next color indicated on the top of the pipe.
My first attempt of the device was to just hit everynote to see how it would sound, I found this was the first initial idea of 90% of the children I viewed then noticed that there was a blue light shining on one of the pipes, so immediately I used cognitive type memory to understand that if I was to hit the pipe something would happen, This subconscious process happens in almost everything we do in everyday life through learning and experimentation seeing this I then hit the top of the blue pipe which gave out a loud note and turned red which immediately indicated stop a different pipe was highlighted blue so from this I have learnt that once blue appears I strike it and it gives out a sound and if I follow these then a song will be played was all learnt in the matter of a second.
The interface itself was the whole physical structure,The pipes that lit up, the bats, the instructional computer station situated next to the instrument.everything was interactive on a physical and computer level lights communicated while the sound stimulated weather I was right or wrong and by following the lights I would then be granted the song played properly also allowed me to be free from the rules, if I didn't play the song the computer was programmed to do I could make up my own song using the various pipes so there was no limitation to usability.
The target audience would be early teens or younger from 12- 14 and above, but mainly 12-13 year olds seemed to enjoy it further noticed every child approached the device the same way I did, with the intention just to hit the pipes to see what happened, there was no mis understanding or difficulty with learnability.The interface and its design where perfect for what was intended to be achieved.
When I did sit and view users using the device for the first time, they found it enjoyable but a bit passive, there wasn't really much in it for them in regards to mystery, to make them want more, it was merely something to use once ,learn ,and move on. Educationally it worked ok, in the respect that the end result the user could play a song without the aid of the color co-ordination, but by memory alone. But this didn't seem to work,it took at least ten or more attempts to achieve the song which was very basic .By then the child had given up, I think that if the interface was maybe a little more dynamic that the user would want to continue to learn more.