The Pen was a handheld device given to every visitor of the reimagined Cooper Hewitt, used to collect objects from exhibit labels and to draw at the museum's touch tables. I led the interaction design at GE, defining how it answered each touch with light and a buzz, from the first sketches to a signed timing specification.

The finished Pen lying on a white surface, matte black with a metal band, beside its two caps and a black lanyard.

Cooper Hewitt Pen

A beautiful extension to the reimagined design museum.

The Cooper Hewitt mansion, brick and stone, seen from its garden in autumn with red cafe chairs on the terrace.

Upon admission to the museum, a patron receives a Pen linked to their ticket. They then curate a personalized museum collection by touching the Pen to exhibit placards. That collection can be downloaded onto the large touchscreen tables to learn more and doodle annotations. When a patron leaves the museum and returns the pen, their collection remains accessible online via the code on their ticket. The staff then clears the Pen’s contents, checks the batteries, and cycles it back for the next Patron.

A wooden table covered in yellow and blue sticky notes and index cards clustered under headings such as mom dad and kids, art students and curators.

Four people in a brick-walled room gather round a board of pinned pen concept renderings, one pointing at it.

Eight people in blue hard hats stand in a stripped museum room under renovation, wires hanging from the ceiling.

Pencil sketches of pen bodies with their internal parts and dimensions, spread across a table with index cards, tape and a clear tube of electronics.

Two pen sketches of an exhibit label with a Pen thumbprint target in its corner, beside a printed label for an Olivetti portable typewriter and an AAA battery.

Not a barrier to entry: It just works for the visitor
Extension of the content: The exhibits are the focus, not the Pen
Belongs in the museum: Well designed, useful, and beautiful
Encourages discovery: Unlocks more content about the exhibit

Part of an ecosystem: The Pen interaction is part of the larger museum experience
Context of use: Different interactions and uses depending on location
Direct manipulation: Enables new interaction with content

Four gray cylindrical pen concepts hanging from black lanyards, each with a band of perforations near the tip, one with its cap removed.

Five slim square-section black pens hanging on coloured straps, each with a row of small LEDs near the tip, one uncapped to show a pointed nib.

Five round pens in black, green, purple, orange and blue hanging from matching looped straps, one with its cap lifted off.

Four rounded pens in orange, gray, white and blue fanned on a dark ground, each with a round button and a row of small lights.

Four black pen bodies with caps in white, green, blue and orange, each with a button and a column of coloured LEDs.

Six black pens with angled tips in white, yellow, orange, blue, green and purple, lined up on a dark ground.

Two white pens with black rounded tips ringed in blue and green, beside a white and a black cylinder on a purple cord.

Three pen concepts: a clear flat bar with a green end, a white body with yellow-green light strips, and a black body with a green power button and tip.

Three pen concepts lying on a gray ground: a black cylinder with a yellow-green end, a white body with yellow light slots, and a silver bar with a green end.

Close view of a black pen with a yellow-green power button, a cluster of small holes above it and a green tip.

Three pens in white, white with blue and black with blue, each with light slots along the body and a clear pointed tip.

Three flat oval pens in green, blue and yellow, each held in a looped frame, with a speaker grille and a row of small lights.

A flat silver bar-shaped pen on a gray lanyard, with a row of lights, a power mark and a speaker grille near the top.

A tapered silver pen seen edge-on from below, with a dark underside and a gray lanyard at its wide end.

Three oval pens in red, orange and yellow with dark necks and looped straps, the yellow one showing a speaker grille and lights.

Three slim wand-shaped pens with silver faces and orange, copper and black backs, each on a looped black lanyard.

White 3D-printed pen body models of different shapes laid in a row on a wooden table, beside printed renderings and a craft knife.

Close rendering in dark gray of a pen body with a triangle mark and a thin light slot, beside its cap with a textured oval face.

On cardboard, a blue 3D-printed pen body beside three AAA cells, a black battery holder and a small green Sistelnetworks circuit board.

CreditGroup concepts with Jennifer Bove, Andrew Crow, Ryan Diener, Paul Haney, Billy Herweh, Jordan Hunsey, and Elliott Koehler.

Defined “Patron” and “Staff” personas
Created simple journey maps
Identified actions, inputs, & outputs
Aligned the communication mediums to hardware cost, battery life, & physical design
Sketched feedback concepts
Created software-based prototypes
Built timing engineering specification
Provided ongoing feedback through delivery

The v3 lighting prototype in a Safari window: buttons for patron, staff and automatic actions beside a rendered Pen with three white LEDs lit. — Pen Lighting Animation · Open prototype v1 · v2 · v3

A hand taps a white prototype pen with a row of LEDs onto a hand-written card reading Magic Tag, beside a green NFC gateway board.

Reading order · left to right, earliest first4 states · five months

v1 · 22 Mar 2014
Six patterns drawn as rows of LEDs with millisecond gaps, each with a time budget: under a second for a scan, under three for a table download.
v3 · 11 Jun 2014
Every pattern redrawn as timing bars, each budget replaced by its trigger (NFC tag, NFC gateway, or both), and renderings of the LEDs added.
v4 · 12 Aug 2014
(full spec below)
v5 · 25 Aug 2014
Every timing cut to three quarters of v4's, the bars drawn to proportion, and the three untimed concepts removed: Scavenger Hunt, Cafe Purchases and Quick Tags.

The Pen Lighting concept v4 sheet of 12 August 2014: renderings of the front LEDs and battery LED at left, three untimed concepts below them, and the patron and staff patterns drawn as blue timing bars with millisecond values, under a Staff Actions heading.

A museum case holding the production Pen with its lanyard and three AAA cells beside two earlier prototypes, with a label reading The Pen, 2014.

A man in glasses smiles behind a glass case of pen prototypes and models in a panelled room with a carved stone fireplace.

Visitors lean over a long touchscreen table in a wood-panelled gallery, a red tapestry on the wall and a glass chandelier beyond.

A hand holds a black Pen printed with Cooper Hewitt against a wall label, its front LEDs lit.

Two children and an adult draw with Pens on a large touchscreen table, a girl beside them holding a Cooper Hewitt ticket.

2, Ideas. AI helped with research, sources, brainstorming or structure. I wrote every word.The tiers

Cooper Hewitt Pen

Intro

Kickoff

Principles

Group concepts

Interaction

Development

Result

AI usage