“Here is our target, here is how we’ll hit it — what are we missing?”

Week 4 was Quarter week, and the energy on the team was a mix of excitement and that specific brand of nervous energy that comes from presenting unfinished work to smart people who will absolutely ask you the hard questions.

Our Quarter presentation laid out the full picture: who Joseph Priestley was, why our clients at the Priestley-Forsyth Memorial Library needed this project, what constraints we were working within ($10K budget, 5×5 foot portable installation, spotty internet, teenage audience), and where we were headed. We walked faculty through our technical approach — local LLM deployment, text-to-speech synthesis, the Looking Glass display exploration — and our design direction for an interactive experience centered on Priestley’s diary.

The feedback was invaluable. Faculty pushed us to think harder about the “wow factor” — what would make teenagers put down their phones and actually engage? They challenged us on whether pure conversation with an AI was enough, or whether we needed something more unexpected and hands-on. The question about visual hooks and the carbonated water experiment specifically came up: how do we make the science feel exciting rather than educational?

We also got practical feedback about our installation plans. Converting our measurements to feet (because, America), thinking about how the experience works for different group sizes, and scheduling regular client meetings going forward were all action items that came out of the week.

The instructor meeting at the bullpen gave us a clear set of marching orders: think about what makes the experiment visually compelling, figure out the engagement hooks that keep teenagers interested (personality? competition? the novelty of making their own soda?), and start tackling the trickier narrative challenges.

Looking back at the first four weeks, we’ve gone from “what even is this project?” to having a working AI voice pipeline, a deep understanding of our subject and site, a design direction we believe in, and — most importantly — a team that’s genuinely excited about making a forgotten scientist unforgettable.

The ghost of Joseph Priestley is stirring. And things are about to get really interesting.