How Dubai’s iconic Museum of the Future creates ‘Future Heroes’

Dubai: From hands-on play, reward-based challenges and interactive activities, the Museum of the Future is combining education and entertainment at its dedicated children’s floor.

Designed for children under the age of 10, the ‘Future Heroes’ level is a fantasy world for children focusing on future skills, aimed at encouraging young minds to make new discoveries about themselves and the world around them.

As they step into the dedicated children’s zone, young visitors are greeted by the sign: “Welcome future heroes. The future needs you.” From there, dedicated house managers at Future Heroes will help children choose their own avatars which best represent them, allowing them to take part in different interactive games and missions and be able to collect achievement badges and rewards for tasks completed.

While they complete the tasks within, children can choose a cape to wear, and are handed wristbands that they use to collect digital badges during their time on the Future Heroes floor.

Place of learning

Future Heroes borrows from what video games offer and then applies it to the real world. Each child becomes a player, exploring areas and activities, taking on challenges and collecting rewards.

Within an open world of exploration and play, children are invited to take part in educational and fun activities centred on six future-proof skills: curiosity, creativity, confidence, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.

A combination of open-ended play and focused challenges which require problem-solving and collaboration, the exhibitions’ three main experiences: Imagine, Design and Build present children with opportunities to play and to learn through activities that encourage communication, collaboration and creativity.

These qualities are rewarded with badges that celebrate making positive contributions to the Future Heroes world by helping, solving problems, creating something new or trying something they’ve never done before.

Labs and badges

The Design Lab is where children can test new technologies of tomorrow, allowing them to write and draw on the walls using light.

Inside the Imagine Lab, hundreds of pale blue orbs cover the walls, divided into four sense categories: touch, smell, see and hear and determine the world around them.

At the Build Lab, children are tasked to use their imagination to create and collaborate to build a futuristic object with the chance to win rewards.

In each Lab, trainers give them different challenges and missions, which allow them to portray behaviours such as creativity or teamwork. Children are also rewarded for being kind, helpful or thoughtful.

There are 12 badges to collect during their stay that can be carried over from visit to visit, while flat screens in the centre of the area interact with the wristband to show children how many badges they have collected.

At any given moment, the Future Heroes may be called on to participate in an urgent mission. These missions present challenges that must be overcome in a limited time. Overseen by the Museum’s Future Heroes expert guides, the urgent missions encourage children to work together towards a shared goal.

Focus on fun

With fun being a key theme at the Future Heroes level, children can head to the Rocket Tower, home to a speedy chute or Balance Balloon, home to high-tech climbing frames that promote physical problem-solving. Both encourage youngsters to unleash their inner energy and get moving in a way that helps them consider their physicality within that space.

Future Heroes is more than a place to learn and play, it is a space for our next generations to forge building blocks of their own future and unlock their full potential.

Imagine and design future

The Museum of the Future is “a factory” for ideas and perspectives to understand, design and build the future.

Spanning an area of 30,000 square metres, the seven-storey pillar-less structure also represents a novel global intellectual centre.

It is a “living” laboratory designed to foster a spirit of collaborative innovation among the Arab world’s leading scientists to inspire new out-of-the-box solutions to tomorrow’s greatest challenges and spur a new era of scientific discovery in the region and beyond.