TactilePaleo
Using Tactile Objects
to improve paleontology education and accessibility
Role: Student Researcher
TOOLS: 3D Printer, Figma, User Study Tools
TIME: 2026.6-2026.9
Motivation
Fossils are an almost entirely visual object. Their form, texture, and species-defining features are all conveyed through sight. But original specimens in museums cannot be touched, and this creates a barrier for all non-expert visitors, not only for blind and low-vision individuals, who simply experience the most extreme version of that barrier. Touch itself can carry far more information than people tend to assume. As paleontologist Renan has observed, roughly 85% to 90% of a fossil's information can be conveyed through touch alone.
The project starts from a concrete technical foundation. PaleoScan is a low-cost fossil digitization system developed at NYU and deployed at the MPPCN museum in Brazil, and it has already scanned over 350 specimens. TactilePaleo explores what becomes possible when this existing 3D data is translated into tactile educational objects. That translation could open up several things at once: a new way for general visitors to explore fossils, a new teaching and research tool for paleontologists, or, for blind and low-vision visitors, a first real chance to touch the details of a fossil directly.
At the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, layered tactile relief was used to let low-vision visitors touch a version of Egon Schiele's painting, an inspiring precedent, though limited by what flat relief can express. TactilePaleo builds on this and goes further, using true 3D printing to carry richer spatial information, with the design content drawn directly from the knowledge paleontologists actually convey when presenting fossils.
The Problem
Fossils have unique shapes. Most specimens from the Crato and Romualdo Formations are matrix-bound, meaning the fossil is embedded in a rock slab rather than existing as a free-standing object. There is surface relief, but not full volume. This characteristic makes them difficult to represent for tactile experience.
Museums have tried to address touch access before, but the attempts fall short in practice. At AMNH, an official list of 30 touchable objects exists across five halls, yet even while actively searching for them in person, several were hard to locate. There is no consistent signage marking which objects can be touched. Each one illustrates a single isolated feature, a bone here, a footprint there, with no narrative connecting them into a coherent learning experience. And even the official documentation itself states the list is designed for a sighted companion to guide a blind or low vision visitor, not for independent exploration.
Also there is no existing research addresses the fabrication of compression fossil replicas specifically. The closest prior work either tests visitor preference for realism, documents a scan to print pipeline without evaluating learning outcomes, or studies enlarged specimens without any narrative design. There is a real gap between having the 3D data and knowing how to turn it into something that teaches.
The research follows a four stage arc:
1. a formative study to understand needs and context,
2. translation of those findings into a design and fabrication pipeline,
3. structured evaluations of the resulting prototypes,
4. a final synthesis of results.
The project currently sits in the first stage.
The formative study runs three lines of inquiry in parallel.
1. A field observation at AMNH tracked how visitors actually engage with fossil halls today, what gets touched, what gets skipped, where the current accessibility provisions break down.
2. Interviews with paleontologists at MPPCN captured what they prioritize when presenting a fossil, and which of those cues are currently conveyed only through sight.
3. Interviews with blind and low vision educators are planned as the third line but not yet started, pending a joint IRB application.
Findings across all three feed into a synthesis step: identifying which needs are shared across the three groups (general visitors, paleontologists, and BLV educators) and which are specific to one.
Across the observation and interview data, a few things became clear. Touch carries more information than the deficit framing usually assumes: paleontologists estimate that most of what a fossil communicates, close to 85 to 90 percent, can be conveyed through the hand alone. What people actually struggle with is not the absence of tactile objects but the absence of structure around them. At AMNH, isolated touch points exist without any narrative thread linking them, and the accessibility documentation itself assumes a sighted companion rather than independent exploration.
The interview data with paleontologists pointed to something more specific than a list of priorities. The way a paleontologist walks a visitor through a fossil is itself a narrative sequence, moving from broad context toward specific detail in a fairly consistent order: sedimentary context, then structural feature, then species comparison (mapping roughly onto three dimensions: process, physical attributes, and species knowledge). Each step in that sequence could be mapped onto a corresponding design element or fabrication technique, rather than treated as an isolated fact to illustrate. That became the starting point for the mapping chart described below.
Adjusting tactile properties ->
Corresponding to fossil narrative
Findings from the formative study were organized into a mapping chart, cross-referencing learning goals against a set of possible design elements, from print resolution and material hardness to structural features like multi-part separation and embedded touch paths.
A handful of elements were pulled out of that chart for early pilot testing, following one line of exploration in particular: adjusting a print's tactile properties so they correspond to what a specific fossil's narrative is trying to emphasize, with audio description planned as a future extension for elements that touch alone cannot carry.
The formative study itself is not yet complete. Blind and low vision educator interviews have not started, and a joint IRB application is currently underway to enable that work. Interview themes from the paleontologist data also still need to be restructured along the three narrative dimensions (sedimentary context, then structural feature, then species comparison) .
Once that groundwork is in place, the plan moves to filling out the rest of the mapping chart with working prototypes, followed by the evaluation stage: perception studies run across all three participant groups this project is meant to serve.
©2026 Yanrong Tian