Design Force & TechFulcrum: An accurate forecast

The new “How We Know the Weather” exhibit at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center unites powerhouse teams from the design, technology and weather industries

by Andrew Friedenthal

We perhaps take for granted the ability to turn on the television or navigate to a website and receive a reasonably accurate forecast for what the weather is going to be tomorrow. Weather is inherently unpredictable, but somehow experts have managed to figure out a way to predict it.

But what actually allows us to do that? The short answer is tons of data. The longer answer involves Bob Baron, founder, president, and CEO of the Baron Critical Weather Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to critical weather information-sharing across the state of Alabama. Baron is the driving force behind “How We Know the Weather” at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama – an immersive new museum exhibit that explores and explains the science of weather.

“The focus of the Institute has been to bring world class instrumentation in support of public safety, educational outreach, and economic development,” explains Baron. This was the motivation for Baron to develop the exhibit, with a goal of helping both children and adults learn about the importance of meteorology. Baron found a host for the exhibit in the Rocket Center, which was looking to revitalize its campus in the post-COVID landscape and had 2,500 square feet of space available.

With a vision and a venue, Baron began to assemble a dedicated team – headed by design-build firm Design Force and AV/ technology consultants TechFulcrum. Together, the team faced the challenge of taking all of the massive amounts of information behind weather prediction systems and turning that into an engaging exhibit that allows visitors to experience the science – and data – of weather prediction for themselves.

Commanding the data

The Baron Institute selected Design Force, in part because of the company’s history of working with the Rocket Center and other prominent institutions. For this project, however, Design Force worked with the team at the Baron Critical Weather Institute, rather than the Rocket Center itself.

Design Force owner Phillip Sowder brought TechFulcrum onto the project, having worked with their team before on multiple collaborations. The partners applied their complementary skillsets, with Design Force addressing the creative elements and TechFulcrum designing a technology package to support the narrative experience. “Design Force is a fantastic creative partner,” says TechFulcrum founder and CEO Scott Arnold. “Their ability to blend aesthetic sensibility, storytelling, and attention to the practicalities of installing and operating an exhibit make our job – and the project owner’s job – much easier.”

The newly assembled team approached the project with an expectation of precision. “Because this is scientifically oriented, we had to make sure that everything was extremely accurate,” explains Baron. His for-profit company, Baron Weather, provided much of the information Design Force and TechFulcrum were tasked with interpreting. Kim Grantham, Vice President of Marketing for Baron Weather, was responsible for sourcing Baron Weather software, data, and resources to support several exhibit areas. “We were the beneficiaries of data contributions from NASA and NOAA as well,” adds Kathi Tew, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at the Baron Institute.

In fact, the amount of data the exhibit would be receiving and synthesizing rivaled or even exceeded that of actual weather prediction centers. “We knew the exhibit would be unique in having a live feed from both the polar orbiting satellite and the geostationary satellite, as well as worldwide lightning and radar information,” explains Baron. “We understood from the start that the data going into that exhibit would be massive, high- quality and state of the art.”

The team was then faced with the task of taking all that data, combining it with complicated information from expert scientists, and creating a multilayered experience that provided both information and excitement for visitors with varying levels of interest. “We had the challenge of having a treasure trove of digital data, but very little of it existed as tangible, easily understandable content,” explains Sowder. “We had to balance everything out to make it fun for everyone and also make it visually appealing.”

The solution was to create a series of stations that combine interpretive graphics, digital displays, and hands-on interactivity, combined with several key immersive experiences that ensure the message of the exhibit is fully absorbed by visitors.

Adding to the complexity, much of the data being sourced by the exhibits would come from live feeds such as the Baron Weather Lynx visualization software that translates live weather information into engaging and easy-to-understand graphics presented on the large Weather Command LED screen.

“One of the tricky parts was to take the story points we wanted to cover and figure out how to pair them with live data streams that, like the weather, can be unpredictable sometimes,” says Arnold. “We couldn’t have accomplished this without the help and efforts of Kim Grantham and the team at Baron Weather.”

Exploring the space

The entranceway to the exhibit, known as the “solarium,” houses a three-dimensional recreation of the sun that uses actual imagery taken of the celestial body. “We wanted to take high-resolution satellite imagery of the sun and create a compelling story that encouraged guests to explore further,” says Arnold.

Developing the display was a technical and creative challenge. The solarium’s “sun” is a large dome protruding out towards guests from a flat, black, shiny background. Images of the sun’s surface are rear-projected onto the dome (and, to create the sun’s corona, onto the semi-transparent background surface) – a process that TechFulcrum had perfected in a past project where they created a three-dimensional eyeball. Arnold wanted to use this particular solution rather than creating the sun out of a full sphere, because it was important to show the undulating, bubbling nature of the sun’s surface, which could only be accomplished by projecting onto the dome from behind.

Contrasting with the black background, from a distance this sun appears to be floating in mid-air, and closer up it shows off the details of its surface that are key to understanding the importance of this celestial body. “It’s a great draw to pull you in, but it’s also a way to talk more about how the sun impacts weather on Earth,” says Arnold.

Touchscreens on the wall to either side of the sun provide an interactive way for visitors to learn more about it, and how data from satellites informs the images they’re seeing on the dome, including the constant motion and rotation of celestial gases and occasional eruptions of plasma.

From there, guests enter the exhibit’s main room that features more than 30 interactive displays, including touchscreens and hands-on models. One offers guests the ability to see static electricity in action with a long-haired wig. Another highlights the pattern wind makes over moving tiles. Each display is independent, allowing guests to visit whatever stations they are drawn to, and in any order.

Nearly all of the displays incorporate the data that Baron, NASA, and NOAA provide, with many showing live data feeds of weather phenomena from around the planet. “All this amazing data is really what powers a lot of this experience,” says Arnold. “When guests look at an explanation of ground-based lightning detection, they’re seeing live incoming data of ground-based lightning detection from around the world.”

Nestled in a far corner of the room is another show-stopper that, though less reliant on live data, is an example of a tactical experience designed to appeal to visitors in a more visceral manner: a recreation of a tornado.

Visitors enter a simulated storm shelter and see a TV playing, only to find the broadcast interrupted by a tornado warning. Two digital display “windows” (which Theory Studios helped to create) on the side walls show what’s happening outside as the tornado forms and passes by. Safe within the shelter, visitors watch as the lights flicker in time with thunder and lightning (before blacking out entirely) and feel the rumbling of the storm thanks to bass- heavy sound design by Dan Newman that goes along with the visuals. The sonic effects are created by low-end transducers placed in the wall and benches, a low-frequency sub-woofer for the storm effects, and midrange overhead speakers for the rest of the audio fill.

The popular experience offers a high throughput – a three-minute experience with one minute of loading/unloading, cycling automatically during operating hours.

The long-term forecast is good!

Although the solarium and the tornado shelter may be the biggest hits with younger visitors, the entire exhibit is already proving quite popular. Sowder recalls that he was installing an update to one exhibit when a child came up to him just to proclaim, “This is my favorite area at the Rocket Center!”

Sowder credits that reaction to the successful collaboration between the Baron Institute, Design Force, and TechFulcrum: “The team makes everything successful, and the end result is that the public really loves the exhibit.”

What’s more, the Rocket Center plans to deploy the exhibit as a part of other offerings that the center provides, including use in Space Camp programming to showcase both the benefits of satellite technology and the importance of accurate weather prediction for aviation.

“Museums have this rare chance to shape how people feel about science,” says TechFulcrum experience designer/developer Christian Lozano. “And when you make it tactile, honest, immersive, and impressive, it sticks.”

“How We Know the Weather” is open now at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. •

Andrew Friedenthal has a Ph.D in comic books – well, American Studies – and now works as a writer in the themed entertainment industry, basically living the dream of his 11-year-old self. With a body of work encompassing plays, screenplays, arts criticism, journalism, academic books, articles, and plenty of copywriting and content marketing, he is obsessed with getting to the heart of any story, regardless of format. Though based out of Austin,TX, where he lives with his wife and daughter, his New York heritage ensures he will always stand “on line” at a theme park, not “in line.”