Little Canada Big Stories
Creating A New Exit Experience That Is Immersive, Engaging and Educational For The Visitors Of Little Canada
2025
By Chiedza Kaseke, Alisha Pereira, Nazifa Alam and Yijun Liu
We were teamed up with Little Canada, a miniature exhibition space based in Toronto Canada, to create an exit experience for their exhibition.

Objectives: To create an exit experience for their visitors that leaves a lasting impression and satisfactory end to their journey through the space.

My Role: UI/UX Design and Programming
The Problem

Little Canada's exit experience lacked a conclusive ending. Visitor's would walk through the whole exhibition space and at the end be faced with either the exit door or the gift shop. This would leave them feeling unsatisfied.

  • Lack of an impactful conclusion
  • Less than satisfactory ending
The Solution

An interactive digital map of Canada that allows users to:

  • Pin meaningful locations
  • Share personal notes and stories
  • View and explore a live collection of stories from others around Canada

This website based map would be made available to the visitors of Little Canada as they complete their tour of the space, creating a sense of finality as they are able to reflect and engage in this digital experience. Leaving a lasting impression and satisfactory conclusion to their time in Little Canada.

The Process
First Observations

After walking through the Little Canada exhibtion space, we made several observations and identified the problem:

  • Great first impression but an underwhelming conclusion
    • There were many aspects to the exhibit but the ending was not as interesting as the start.
  • Disconnect between the Public’s Perception versus reality
    • There was a disconnect of what people expect from Little Canada its reality
  • Uncertainty in the Target Market
    • There needs to be more research into who the main target market is for this project to be successful
Demographic

After walking through the Little Canada exhibtion space, we made several observations and identified the problem:

  • Age: 8-65
  • Location: Live or visiting the GTA
  • Occupation: students, working professionals
  • Class: Middle to upper class
  • Interests: Canadian culture, trains, travel, education, miniature models, unique experiences
  • Tourists, both local and abroad
  • Families (parents with children)
  • Parents of children, especially the mothers (who are in charge of decision making about leisure visits)
  • The parents are the top ticket buyers as per Little Canada’s data
Case Studies
We looked at immersive experiences, what made them memorable and how they successfully left lasting impressions on their visitors.

These experiences being:

  • Invisible worlds, Natural History Museum, New York
  • Team Labs Planet, Tokyo
  • Road Trip, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose
Each of these had elements of interactivity, a form of participation, immersion and education. These elements would become the basis of the project that we would go onto create.

Our core values developed into: an interactive and reflective edutainment experience that lets visitors deepen their love and knowledge of Canada’s lands, cultures, and heritage.
Branding
We developed potential brand guidelines for the website that would ultimately be the branding that we would use throughout the creation of the website and other marketing materials.
Survey
Proceeding the creation of these brand guidelines, we held a survey to gain a better understanding as to which the general public preferred Sample size: n=13
Result: Slide 1's brand guidelines were the most preferred visually
First Prototype  

We then moved on to developing the first prototype for the website. These were the user processes I focused on when developing it:

  1. Selecting a location to place a pin on the map
  2. Submitting a story that will correlate with the pin placed
  3. Exploring other pins and reading the other stories submitted
First User Testing Session
Sample size: n=7
Conducted over zoom in a group call with a group of 4 then a group of 3. I conducted the test verbally while Alisha took notes of what the participants were saying. Participants were encouraged to speak while conducting the testing in order to know where there was confusion within the processes.
User Tasks
  1. Story submission — Select Niagara Falls, place a pin and submit a story successfully.
  2. Reviewing submitted story — Open and review submitted story on the map through the pin and exit the story.
User Feedback

Key issues and what needed to be address for the final design:


  1. Confusion around the pin - many thought that it will move and that they can place it on the map themselves
  2. Lack of back button on the screen when you're viewing the story - feels trapped
  3. Images or photo of the location on the pin will be helpful so people can see what the stories are about
  4. Consider adding a search bar to search up the different areas within the country
  5. Legibility and UI choices were liked
Demo Day At Little Canada
Sample size: n=22
Conducted in person at Little Canada. This was a closed demo day with the staff of Little Canada in the space where the our exit project would be placed if implemented. This test was done by having a laptop projected on a large TV screen,
where the staff could type and see their stories on a large screen. If implemented in the future, there would be a large projectiton on the wall which shows the pins popping up on the map as visitors submit their stories.
User Tasks
  1. Story submission — Read the instructions, type in a title for the story, type in an alias, type in an address within Canada, type in the story they want to share, then submit the story.
  2. Reviewing previosuly submitted stories — Select the map page and review submitted story or explore the other stories previosuly submitted.
User Feedback

Key issues and what needed to be address for the final design:


  1. Type in box titles confusion
  2. Add placeholder text in the text boxes
  3. Figure out what happens when 2 pins are in the same place
  4. The drop down box is not visible down there when the autofill addresses appear
  5. Add a button that will appear when story is submitted and take you to the map direclty
  6. Instructions Pop Up:
    1. Make instructions 1 sentence for each step as the current text is too much to read for users
Conclusion
Overall, the stakeholders were very happy with the final product and they hope to take it forward and scale it in the future. During the demo day and industry day showcase TMU held, the feedback was very positive and we received over 70 submissions in total from the general public and Little Canada's staff members. Many were eager to share their stories, took photos of their stories on the map and shared the link to the website for others they know to participate.
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© Chiedza Kaseke 2025