ASK DR DISCOVERY

Ask Dr. Discovery

The Ask Dr. Discovery project is an intuitive, user-friendly smartphone app that encourages museum visitors to engage deeply with museum content by posing questions to a virtual scientist astronaut called Dr. Discovery, who provides answers and fun mini-challenges.

The questions that visitors ask Dr. Discovery are gathered anonymously in a large database. An analytics system analyzes the data and provides continuous evaluation data to museum staff, helping them make just-in-time tweaks (or longer term changes) to exhibits and content as current events and visitor needs and interests change.

By enhancing visitor experience and improving museum access to data for evaluation and data-driven decision making, Ask. Dr. Discovery has both a direct and indirect impact on museums and visitors of all types. This project is also helping to train the next generation of STEM and education innovators by employing a diverse team of undergraduate and graduate students.

An overview of Ask Dr. Discovery can be found here.

The Ask Dr. Discovery Project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through grant award #1438825.

Team

Ask Dr. Discovery is headed by Judd Bowman, Brian Nelson, and Cassie Bowman at Arizona State University. The Dr. Discovery leadership team also includes Jared Korinko, Meg Hufford, and Jodie Hoffman. A large number of ASU undergraduate students also play key roles on the project. For the full list of Dr. D team members, please look here.

Ask Dr. Discovery collaborates with partners from the Arizona Science Center and the Arizona Museum of Natural History.