Matt Emma
Image Credit: Wang
For most of us, a museum is a collection of objects in a room—a place where we go to look. For Shih-Hsueh Wang, a museum is a place where we go to feel.
We are currently in a shift where cultural institutions are moving away from static displays and are expected to tackle broader subjects—from the grit of military history to the delicate science of evolution. The job of translating those topics into an experience isn’t just about graphic design; it’s about choreography. Wang, a UX designer at G&A Strategy and Design, operates at this distinct intersection. Trained as an architect, he doesn’t just look at a screen; he looks at the air around it.
“I was trained to think of space as one continuous flow,” Wang explains. “It isn’t just about the touchpoints or the kiosks. It’s about what happens in the space between them—the pacing, the mood, the transitions. That’s where the emotion is.”
He is quietly shaping some of the most visceral exhibits in the country, from the Navy SEAL Museum in San Diego to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (CMNH). His work proves that when physical sensation meets digital storytelling, you don’t just learn a story—you step inside it.
When too much content meets a kid’s attention span
At the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Wang faced a classic design conflict: curators who wanted to share vast amounts of scientific depth, and technologists who wanted simplicity. Caught in the middle were the visitors—specifically, children whose engagement relies on active participation.
“We knew kids weren’t going to stand there and read paragraphs of text,” Wang recalls. “So, the question became: What is essential, and what can we leave as a discovery for later?”
Wang didn’t just cut text; he reorganized the hierarchy of information. He moved complex explanations into optional “deep dive” layers and replaced text-heavy descriptions with animated infographics. It was a gamble that paid off. During testing, the team watched as visitors stayed longer—a critical metric in museum design—and, most importantly, could explain the core concepts back to the designers.
“It proved that clarity doesn’t mean oversimplifying,” Wang says. “It means giving people a way in.”
When the physical world pushes back
One of the hardest lessons in spatial design is that digital concepts often misbehave when they enter the real world. During the installation phase at CMNH, the team hit a wall: The projection mapping wasn’t bright enough to cut through the ambient light, and the touchscreens had “dead zones” where the hardware simply wouldn’t register a finger.
“It’s a very real moment when you realize, ‘Oh, the hardware isn’t going to do what we imagined,’” he says.
Instead of panicking, Wang adapted. He adjusted the visual contrast to punch through the lighting issues and re-mapped the interface, moving interactive elements away from the glitchy edges of the screen. It wasn’t a glamorous fix, but it saved the user experience.
“My biggest takeaway was that everyone—visual designers, UX, developers—needs to see the piece full-scale earlier. Screens can lie. Space can’t.”
Teaching younger designers to zoom out
As the UX lead for the massive National Coast Guard Museum project, Wang is overseeing more than 20 interactive exhibits. He noticed that younger designers often have a habit of diving straight into the pixels of a screen before understanding the context of the room.
“It’s easy to design a good moment,” he notes. “It’s harder to design a moment that makes sense in the flow of a whole floor.”
To fix this, Wang implemented creative briefs for every single interactive element—documents that mapped out the emotional beats, learning goals, and the visitor journey before a single pixel was pushed.
“Once everyone understood the bigger story, the wireframes practically designed themselves,” he says.
When giving needs to feel like giving
Designing a donation kiosk is usually a purely transactional task. But for the St. Nicholas National Shrine in New York, Wang knew it had to be different. The experience needed to feel calm, intentional, and reverent—not feeling transactional or rushed.
“We stripped it down,” he explains. They removed the flashing urgency typical of e-commerce. Instead, they used clear tiers, simple language, and a gentle visual cadence.
“No flashing buttons. No pressure. Just a respectful invitation.”
By matching the tone across both the physical kiosk and the mobile site, Wang created a unified gesture of giving that felt consistent, regardless of where the visitor started.
Audience intuition isn’t one-size-fits-all
Wang’s work requires him to shape-shift. One day, he is designing for groups of middle schoolers moving quickly through a gallery. at the Junior Achievement Dream Accelerator; the next, he is creating for veterans at the Navy SEAL Museum.
“‘Intuitive’ is different for everyone,” he says, touching on the reality that mental models vary heavily based on lived experience.
For students, he leans into high energy: vivid Augmented Reality (AR), playful prompts, and bright visuals. For veterans, the design language shifts to respect and depth—offering more context, more space, and more stillness.
“At CMNH’s Identify It! interactive, we saw kids measuring birds and sketching shapes on screen,” he says. “Three minutes of genuine curiosity. That was enough. Their parents could dig deeper if they wanted. Everyone gets the version they need.”
From architecture to UX: Designing what lasts
Wang’s architectural foundation is the lens through which he views all interactivity. He is less interested in trends than in how people actually move through a space.
“Great buildings last because they adapt to people,” he says. “They’re rooted in human behavior.”
He approaches UX the same way. Before diving into pixels, he asks what the body intuitively wants to do in that space.
“I never start with the technology,” he says. “I start with the story and the gesture.”
A seesaw, a pandemic, and a moment of connection
This philosophy is perhaps best illustrated by a personal art project Wang created during the height of the pandemic. Titled Island of Rain, the installation featured a seesaw that required two strangers to sit on either end, separated by distance. As they moved, their kinetic energy generated vapor that condensed into mist—falling as “rain” between them.
The piece won a Good Idea Award at the Taipei New Horizon Creative Festival, but its brilliance was in its simplicity: two people, one physical gesture, and a shared moment of connection without a single word spoken.
“That project taught me that one gesture can carry an entire idea,” he says. “No screens, no sensors. The body already knows what to do.”
Turning a scientific system into something you can feel
Wang brought that tactile philosophy back to the museum floor with the Mechanics of Evolution interactive at CMNH. The team could have easily used a touchscreen slider to show how environments change. Instead, Wang pushed for a physical hand crank.
As visitors turn the heavy crank, they physically drive the environmental changes on the screen, watching species adapt or vanish based on their actions.
“The crank makes the science physical,” he explains. “You feel the effort. You feel the change.”
It transforms a passive lesson into muscle memory, leveraging the psychological concept of embodied cognition—where the mind learns through the body’s movements. Parents and kids gather around the wheel, turning it together, reacting viscerally to the outcome.
“When visitors physically drive the change, they connect more deeply with the idea,” Wang says. “It’s learning through the hand, not just the eye.”
Designing for a future with AI—without losing the present
We are living in a moment where AI is rapidly automating parts of digital product design. However, Wang believes his work occupies a space that algorithms cannot reach: the physical, emotional reality of being present in a room.
“AI can generate screens,” he acknowledges. “But it can’t replicate what it feels like to stand under a suspended military delivery vehicle, or hear a hushed voice in a dark room, or feel the weight of a crank turning.”
That is the heart of his work—the tangible elements that refuse to be automated.
“We design for presence,” he says. “For the moment when someone pauses because something in the room speaks to them. That’s the part of museum design that lasts.”
The stories live inside the space
Wang’s approach blends architecture and UX into something distinctly his own: a way of designing that uses the body as a guide, space as a narrative tool, and technology as a supporting actor rather than the star.
“The story always comes first,” he says.
“Everything else—the screens, the mechanics, the tech—is just there to make sure people feel it.”
And in a world full of noise and novelty, that kind of quiet, intentional design might be the most timeless thing of all.
Wang’s work acts as a quiet rebellion against the disposable nature of modern technology. In an industry often obsessed with the next update or the faster click, he is slowing things down. He isn’t building for the scroll; he is building for the pause.
When a visitor leaves the museum, they might forget the specific date of a battle or the scientific name of a bird. But they will remember the weight of the crank in their hand. They will remember the hush of the room. They will remember the feeling of a story that didn’t just happen on a screen, but happened to them.
That is the true craft behind Wang’s designs. He is using the temporary tools of technology to build something permanent in the mind—proving that while buildings are made of steel and stone, the most enduring structures are the ones made of emotion.