Less Fuzzy

Be less fuzzy. As the New Year approaches, that's my resolution for my own work, as well as my advice for my clients.

There are lots of "fuzzy" terms in the museum business: Interactivity, Prototyping, Evaluation ...

Everyone has a basic idea of what they think those terms mean, but it often becomes clear(er) as a discussion or design meeting progresses that the use of a term like "interactive" could cover everything from a simple flip-up label to a more complicated design activity.  If you don't lay down some markers at the beginning of your discussions, you can really end up in a bad spot further into the design process.

This has come up recently as I've been speaking with clients and colleagues about "Maker Spaces." "Maker" and "Making" have become a sort of nebulous (and essentially so fuzzy as to be nearly worthless) shorthand for "spaces where visitor do creative things."  (Also, true to Museums loving to jump on a marketable bandwagon, the term"Maker" latches onto both the success and notoriety of Make magazine and Maker Faires.)

Unfortunately, without being a bit more specific, one museum's "Maker Space" could be an unstaffed table with glue sticks and recycled scraps, while another museum's space could be a staffed area where people could use tools like soldering guns and 3D printers.

While shorthand terms like "Maker Space" are a reasonable place to start a design conversation, the devil really is in the details.  Find a way, early in the process, to get specific about each person's starting point and expectations.

So as 2013 beckons, I wish all my ExhibiTricks readers a happy, healthy, and less fuzzy New Year!


Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

Visitors Are Heterogeneous: An Interview With Erika Kiessner

Erika Kiessner is an Exhibit Developer and Prototyper who is passionate about great exhibit experiences and the wonders of the world we live in.  I'm so pleased that Erika was kind enough to agree to be interviewed for ExhibiTricks!



What’s your educational background?
I have a BASc in Industrial Engineering, where I focused on Human Factors, which I earned at the University of Toronto. I have an MFA in Media Arts, where I focused on Interaction Design which I earned at the Utrecht College of Arts (Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht) in Holland.



What got you interested in Museums?
I grew up in Toronto and always loved visiting the Ontario Science Centre (OSC.) My family also took yearly trips to Sudbury to visit both friends and Science North. But the clincher was participating in a program at the OSC called the Ontario Science Centre Science School. This program allows you to do one semester of your final year of high school in classes taught at the OSC
by educators from the OSC.

The program involved a lot of museum experiences, such as mentoring with OSC staff and running small carts on the floor of the museum with visitors. Seeing behind the scenes at the OSC was a magical experience. I loved everyone I met there. The people I met were all smart and enthusiastic about science. They were inquisitive and creative and they all seemed to love what they were doing.

I already had a love of the museum, but now I saw how great things were behind the exhibits and I wanted to be a part of that. I saw so clearly how this was a group of people sharing their passions with the world and that I could do the same thing. I’ve never lost the joy that I felt then even though I’ve moved on from the OSC.



Does working with teams to create exhibits inform your design process?
It absolutely does. I don’t think that creating exhibits is something one can do alone. Visitors are heterogeneous. So seeing things from multiple viewpoints is crucial to ensuring you reach your actual visitors rather than just people like you.

Plus, I find creative pushback very helpful in refining and improving ideas. Ideas rarely emerge fully formed and ready to go to production.



Tell us a little bit about how your tinkering and fabricating skills inform your exhibit design work?  I have interfaces on my mind all the time. When I am thinking about an exhibit concept or problem, the interface is the first thing I try to frame my solutions with. In that way the “what” of an exhibit is tightly linked with the “how” of it.  When it comes to a whole exhibition, I am thinking about what the theme is and how to give visitors access to its concepts through individual exhibits and experiences.





What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about exhibition development? I’m not sure that I have an answer to this. I think there is lots of great maker stuff in Instructables. There are interesting reviews in ExhibitFiles. But when I want to know more about exhibition development, I tend to talk to people about it.

I think that Human Factors is a rich area to mine for lessons about how people use things and interpret them. Also, there is an amazing amount of research in the design of retail spaces (Journal of Consumer Research and the like), which gets at the psychological impact of design. I am interested in learning theory, but people are so different from each other in the way that they learn.



What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals, especially those from smaller museums, in developing their exhibitions?
Test things out. I am personally often guilty of assuming that I know what visitors will know, or what they will want. But it is tricky to guess and it is easy to miss some really great elements thinking that way.

Even if the museum doesn’t have the resources to try out whole exhibits, there is lots of value in testing out just the text elements. It is cheap and easy to do, and it can give a lot of value to the exhibition.



What do you think is the “next frontier” for museums?
I think we are right on the cusp of an Augmented Reality(AR) breakthrough for museums. The tools for building exhibits that integrate AR are starting to reach a critical mass. Soon enough developers will get their hands on them and we are going to start to see some new ways of doing displays with them.

With smartphones becoming ever more common, visitors increasingly have the tools they need right in their pockets. I only hope that museums can agree on a shared platform so that the visitors do not need to download a new app every time they walk into a new institutions.



What are some of your favorite museums or exhibitions?
I love Science North in Sudbury for how it handles its live animals and makes use of its space.  Seeing Galileo’s telescope in the travelling “Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy” exhibit really blew my mind. I love the Louvre because it is impossible not to be blown away by the sheer density of it. The City Museum is this beautiful, amazing thing that really challenges all one's preconceptions about museums.

The Mill City Museum in Minneapolis is wonderful both for how it showed the old building and how it used the old elevator as a really unique theatre.  The Johnson Geo Centre in St. John’s Newfoundland is dug into Signal Hill and the exhibits are walled in by the rock of the hill. The Utrecht University Museum has an amazing cabinet of curiosities in it. But to be honest, it is hard for me not to love something about every museum I have visited. I have yet to visit one that didn’t have some real treasures in it.



Can you talk a little about some of your current projects?
The project I’m most excited about right now isn’t for a museum at all. We are building interactive set pieces for a modern dance company. It is a really challenging experience because the needs of dancers are very different from the needs of visitors!



If money were no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?
I would love to do a science exhibition about a city, embedded in the city landscape. I imagine walk-up exhibits on street corners and points of interest that draw your attention to something in the vicinity and give a science-based explanation for it. From architecture to wind patterns, local flora to material properties, there are elements of a city that are easy to take for granted even if there are fascinating explanations for them.

For example, in Toronto one of the big downtown office buildings has a cantilevered portion that suspends 13 stories over the sidewalk. An exhibit there might draw an area on the ground with the statement “Standing here there are XX thousand pounds of concrete suspended above you!” Then an explanation about how the building is constructed to support the structure overhead.


Thanks again to Erika for sharing her thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers! 

Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

ExhibitSEED: Beyond Green Exhibits Workshop

Heads up exhibit folks!  I've posted before about working on The Green Exhibit Checklist project with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI.) 

Now there is an opportunity to participate in some amazing one-day workshops around the country centered around "green design" topics, called "ExhibitSEED: Beyond Green Exhibits Workshop."

OMSI is presenting five regional workshops this spring on sustainable exhibit development. At each one-day hands-on workshop, exhibit developers, designers, and fabricators will discuss practical skills for creating more sustainable interactive exhibits. Each workshop will focus on case studies and concrete tools that allow exhibit teams to make more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable choices throughout the exhibit development process. 

OMSI is currently registering for the first workshop which will take place on February 25, 2012, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (1945 SE Water Ave, Portland, OR). The other workshops will be hosted by the Children's Museum of Houston, the Miami Science Museum, the Science Museum of Minnesota, and The Franklin Institute.

To register, or for more information, visit www.exhibitseed.org.

Each one-day workshop is free for selected participants. Participants may also request travel funding. ExhibitSEED and the ExhibitSEED workshops are funded by the National Science Foundation and developed by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) with input from local and national museum industry and design advisors.

What are you waiting for?  Click on over to www.exhibitseed.org to find out how you can participate in one of the workshops!



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

The Museum Fiscal Cliff?

The incessant drum beat about "The Fiscal Cliff" coming out of Washington coupled with news that the Dallas Museum of Art will eliminate its admission fees (as outlined in this excellent LA Times article) got me thinking again about the economic future of museums.

Museums, maybe even more than other non-profits and cultural institutions, seem happy to play the Blanche DuBois card and "depend on the kindness of strangers."  Unfortunately for museums, relying on tax-leveraged donations or corporate/philanthropic largesse, presents some fundamental challenges to a sustainable future.  Here are two large practical issues looming on the edge of a potential museum fiscal cliff:


• Demographics: The fine folks at Reach Advisors have pointed out again and again the practical demographic issues facing museums. (See this post for instance.)  Put simply, museum visitors (paying or otherwise) tend to be older and whiter than the current population at large, and the future demographic trends for the U.S. as well.

Leaving the very real concern of visitor demographics aside, why can't museums make a go of it on pure admission numbers alone?  As the AAM has reported:

There are approximately 850 million visits each year to American museums, more than the attendance for all major league sporting events and theme parks combined (471 million).

If we really have this volume of annual visitors, why are museums constantly rattling their begging cups?

 
• Marketing Gimmicks:  Museums have become great at selling the "sizzle" (marketing hype) instead of the "steak" (their core collections and activities.)  It really has become one step above professional wrestling marketing techniques in some cases.  If some museum professionals feel they need to "trick" people into visiting their institutions, are they really in the right business?

As writer Christopher Knight aptly notes in the same LA Times article mentioned above, many museums have coupled these carny come-ons to membership incentives as well:
 

Fundamentally, it means expanding the museum's membership. The usual method for that is pretty degraded: Program the museum with lightweight entertainments to appeal to audiences with no interest in art, and then offer discounted admission to new members who otherwise wouldn't dream of dropping 10 bucks -- or $40, $60 or more if the whole family comes along -- to see a beautiful 10th century Indian sandstone carving of Vishnu or a fine 1919 Cubist still life by Picasso in the permanent collection.

Hucksterism is the common term for the usual member's discount, with art regarded as P.T. Barnum's Fiji mermaid and visitors urged to step right this way to check out the egress. The gambit mostly creates churn: An attendance surge is followed by a drop, until the next high calorie/low nutrition program juices the numbers again.

So, what's the real "value proposition"for museums?  What are the museum experiences that will draw a majority of folks from the local communities?  I'd argue that that the strongest draw that museums still have (over every other type of media) is their "stories and stuff."  The opportunity to engage with amazing physical (not virtual) objects and compelling narratives in a communal, social environment is what museums should be selling if they want to avoid their own "fiscal cliff."

I applaud directors like Maxwell Anderson who are decoupling from the old-style "entitlement program" funding model most U.S. museums work under.  It's really a return to the fundamentals of the museum value proposition --- "we have amazing stuff we'd like to share with you."

What do you think?  Is your museum facing its own fiscal cliff(s)? Should museums jettison their old-school admissions and funding models?  Leave your thoughts in the "Comments" Section below!



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)

ReWind: MaKey MaKey and Scratch and HCI+ISE

Recently I've been thinking about (and playing with!) materials and resources broadly related to HCI (or Human Computer Interface) matters.  So, what follows below is a "ReWind" (or "encore") version of a previous ExhibiTrick post about a cool (and relatively inexpensive) system called MaKey MaKey.

In that vein, I just wanted to make you aware of two other things that fit under the broad HCI umbrella:  The first is a cool project and conference supported by the National Science Foundation that I'm an advisor to, called HCI + ISE (Human Computer Interface + Informal Science Education.)

If the thoughtful use of technology in museums and exhibits is of interest to you, check out the HCI+ISE website, and apply to attend the conference in June 2013 in, and around, Albuquerque.

The second thing may be a bit of "old news" to some folks, but it's new to me!  Scratch is a simple programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art -- and share your creations on the Web.  Scratch was developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab.  I've just started working with Scratch myself and working on exhibit development and prototyping projects with kids and it's really been productive and fun!  I'll be writing a more in-depth ExhibiTricks post on Scratch in the future, but in the meantime, enjoy this ReWind post about MaKey MaKey!



I was a Kickstarter backer of a neat project called MaKey MaKey.  In exchange for backing the MaKey MaKey guys (two MIT Media Lab students) I received a set of stuff like that pictured below (a MaKey MaKey board, a USB connector, and a set of alligator clips) to connect my computer to the real world with real objects (like bananas, PlayDoh, coins, or anything else that is at least a little bit conductive.)

Basically you can make a physical object act like a computer key (hence MaKey MaKey) to cause other things to happen. Watching the video at the top of this post (you can also watch it on YouTube) gives you some fun examples like an electronic piano using bananas as keys.

This is all great news for exhibit designers who don't want to become computer geeks or code monkeys.  (Even though the MaKey MaKey board is built using Arduino, an open-source way of connecting computers with the physical world.)  The idea of using physical objects as HCI (Human Computer Interfaces) isn't new, but MaKey MaKey makes it much easier and cheaper than before.  In addition,  MaKey MaKey boards are a great tool for prototyping exhibit ideas that involve electronics, computers, or other digital media.

You can find out more about any of the groups or things mentioned in this post by clicking on any of the links above, but for now I'm off to start playing with my MaKey MaKey!  (I'll show off some of my own MaKey MaKey projects in future ExhibiTricks posts, or feel free to email me if you're doing cool stuff with MaKey MaKey that you'd like to share as well!)

P.S. Even if you weren't a Kickstarter backer of MaKey Makey, you can pre-order a basic kit via their website.



Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)