Relevance on a Titanic Scale

I've written before about the power that relevance can provide in exhibit experience design-- especially in science exhibits. Sometimes this idea is easy to convey and other times not. This week, I read a great quote from David Savory of TELUS World of Science which puts it quite clearly:

"...everyone knows ice is cold but when people press their hands onto it within the context of the sinking of the Titanic, they get a memorable sense of how unpleasant it would be to bob in water containing icebergs. And probably everyone already knows they get a little squirrelly in a small space but being in a confinement exhibit would create a memorable bit of fear. And everyone knows the body is made of stringy muscles but when they realize they are looking at real dead people in a BodyWorlds exhibition, those weird-looking bits take on a whole new significance."

It isn't always easy to craft those profundities. For example, there are whole teams of people working very hard on making Nanotechnology relevant to the public. In addition, not every experience in your museum can or should have the same level of deep impact on the visitor. There need to be peaks, valleys, and plateaus of engagement and reflection. It's the orchestration of all of these things that makes the overall experience resound... and live on in the visitor after they have left. That after-the-fact mulling over is where learning also happens. Giving them a relevant hook boosts the likelihood that a memorable connection is made.

Thank You, NPR

Last Monday, NPR began a series on museums, and given the current financial crisis*, I just have to say THANK YOU. The first edition starred the heavies: Ford Bell- President of AAM, Philipe de Montibello- iconic director of the Met, and Charles Willson Peale's Cabinet of Curiosities- iconic museum "built around the desire to document the history of discovery in the new world". For those of you that missed the heaviest hitter, here it is:

"If you add up the attendance for every major-league baseball, basketball, football and hockey game this year, the combined total will come to about 140 million people. That's a big number, but it's barely a fraction of the number of people who will visit American museums this year. Museums are big business, attracting... 850 million people annually"

Wow. I mean, we spend a considerable about of hand wringing on attendance and bugets. Does this mean it's paying off? I think it some way it must. The comments on the first story are articulate, and cover plugs for Visual Thinking Strategies to small house museums. Some pro, some con. This one was pretty sweet:

"For every multi-milllion dollar new museum building, there are hundreds of small house and history museums that care for and display items of local significance. They are under-staffed and under-funded but fill an important niche in many places as community centers, meeting spaces and adjunct school classrooms. Before slamming museums as elitist or unnecessary, think about your community without a repository for its history, culture and art." - Peter Wisbey

The second edition profiled Alex Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts who has a museum dream life. The comments were predictable: " Mr. Nyerges is not the typical museum director in America" (Scott Wands). Yes, his story is exceptional- but part of the reason we don't take home the big bucks is a trade-off- we do get to do interesting work, with topics that stretch and grow us daily. I think there are several more shows coming, and like a CNET review, I'll wait til the end to see what the sum is. This series has got me looking for good museum-related podcasts and radio shows. If you know of any, feel free to send them my way: maria [at] gyroscopeinc [dot] com. Thanks. * For institutions facing tough times, the AAM has posted some guidelines on their site here.

"Best" Exhibit? Why that's an impossible question

When I worked at the Exploratorium, I was often asked the question "what are the top 5 exhibit here?" or at a dinner party I often get asked "what's the best exhibit you've ever seen?". It often gets me to wondering if the director at the MOMA is ever asked "what is the best work of art you have"? Or if the president of Stanford is asked "what's the best class at your school?". I know it stems from a genuine desire to make sense of what often seems (especially in the case of the Exploratorium) an overwhelming amount of info and experiences. However, exhibits are as unique as the person standing before it. They are also developed for specific reasons, and are often not intended for everyone-- but because they live in a public space, they need to be understood by all, if not engaged. When I worked there, I proposed an idea of creating curated podcasts or maps, where visitors could select a filter for what they wanted to experience, such as: - exhibits for teenagers - full-body exhibits - exhibits by artists ...and so on. In addition to to having the museum experts make these determinations, what about letting visitors leave their own maps and trails behind in a museum… much as they do on-line? The nice thing about this approach in a museum vs. in an on-line context, is that you still get to "browse" and be exposed to exhibits that may not be on your "list", since they may be adjacent. How could we make visitor-experienced floor plans? How might we allow visitors to get a sense of what their peers or someone they aspire to be “liked” or “learned from”? Have you seen this working somewhere already? Did you participate?

Museum + LEED Friday: How Green is Good Design?

A colleague forwarded a book review from Business Week the other day for “Do you matter? How Great Design Makes People Love Your Company”, by industrial designer Robert Brunner and corporate consultant Stewart Emery. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“Their theory is simple: Successful executives should treat design as more than a finishing discipline that simply improves products' aesthetics. Instead, design should influence every aspect of customers' experiences. For Brunner and Emery, design is an infrastructural element that helps define every aspect of a company, including Web site, stores, customer support, packaging, and messaging as well as products. "Design…can't be a veneer," they explain.”

In a nutshell, this book is about the importance of creating endearing products. I, like many, also add that good design [read: considered] is inherently green. In my personal experience for every 2 PCs my husband buys, I buy 1 Mac. Why? I like the machine, it’s a better design inside and out thus, I want to keep it longer.

However, we’re talking about museums, not products. So, what can we learn from their world?

I know that museums have long been engaged in building meaningful relationships with its “customers” and “following the visitor home” is fast becoming a mantra. As the authors foster the idea that a systemic approach to design needs to be an infrastructural element in an organization, I realize that’s what LEED is based on. The folks at Inhabitat put it simply: “Good Design is Green Design and Green Design is Good Design”.

Really, green design is fully considered design- it takes into account the entire system in which we live and operate. I would go further to say that if you have an approach that is meshed with your mission, your resources, and your audience (i.e., fully considered), it makes the entire development of your organization more efficient. Think of all the issues you wouldn’t have to debate, and how much you could focus on other things.

I’m not arguing for a monotheistic approach to design, nor am I saying that Apple Computer is the precise model to follow. I’m simply suggesting that there is a lot of efficiency built into their approach, which mirrors the LEED approach- that’s something we could learn from.

So in order to be successful at [green] design, looks like it needs to be treated as a core value in an organization, not a finish. Which means that ideas such as the ones put forward in that book may help in getting that point to rise to the top of an organization.

Relevance, Please!

Recently, I had a chance to see the exhibit Dinosaurs: Ancient Fossils, New Discoveries at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Some of the artifacts, both small and larger are amazing... and beautiful. The scale and scope of the exhibit is grand. In addition, they made a good use of docents-a-plenty and public programs- such as having activities like casting a mastodon's teeth in plaster of paris nearby. One of the things I especially enjoyed was the use of time context, or as we like to call it, relevance. Peppered throughout the exhibit were placards indicating where in time periods such as the pleistocene fell. They also had another, similarly scaled component where they informed you of where in Colorado you might have found these creatures. My only beef is that just as the sheer size of these reptiles are awesome, so is their place in time in relation to ours. Rather than having it be a side note, I believe that it would have greater impact on the visitor to bring forward any connection, such as time or place, into the primary exhibit area. Drawing connections from object to visitor creates a more lasting memory. When visitors are given the opportunity to make a link in relation to themselves (rather than an abstract idea), they have a way to forever locate it in their internal world Plus I think it could make for a cool interactive. I'm curious to hear about what others think about this. Do you feel it would "take away" from the awesomeness of the exhibit if more resources were spent to make room for this? Would you give up a dino skeleton for this?