What Fixing Broken Exhibits Has Taught Me About Smart Design
Let me paint you a picture. It's Tuesday morning, and the school groups are due to arrive in an hour. Your star interactive exhibit—the one that took six months to design and three months to build—is making that clicking sound again. You know, the one that means "expensive repair visit" in exhibit language.
Meanwhile, that simple wooden flip-book station you built as a "temporary" solution five years ago? Still going strong, still engaging visitors, and the only maintenance it needs is occasionally tightening a screw.
After four decades of watching exhibits live, die, and get resurrected more times than a soap opera character, I've learned that maintenance-friendly design isn't about dumbing things down—it's about respecting the brutal realities of public use.
The Immortals: Exhibits That Refuse to Die
Simple Mechanical Interactives: Hand cranks, pulleys, lever systems, rotating drums. These workhorses continue to operate effectively because they utilize principles that have proven successful since the Industrial Revolution. When they break, any competent handy person can fix them.
Magnetic Systems: Those "build your own molecule" exhibits with magnetic atoms? Nearly indestructible. Drop-proof and child-proof, with the only moving parts being the magnetic pieces themselves.
Gravity-Fed Demonstrations: Ball runs, catapults, pendulums. Physics does the work, not motors. When something goes wrong, it's usually obvious and can be easily fixed.
The Universal Laws of Exhibit Entropy
Law #1: If It Can Be Touched, It Will Be Touched Incorrectly
Design for the visitor who will push when they should pull, lean when they should stand, and somehow find the one way to use your exhibit that you never imagined.
Smart design response: Make the "wrong" way to interact either impossible or harmless. You can't push in the wrong direction if the mechanism only moves one way.
Law #2: Children Are Tiny Engineers of Destruction
Not maliciously—they're just incredibly effective at finding failure points. They apply force in unexpected directions, use exhibits as climbing equipment, and have an uncanny ability to separate components you thought were permanently attached.
Smart design response: If a six-year-old can break it, assume they will. Design accordingly.
Law #3: The Most Popular Exhibits Wear Out Fastest
Success breeds its own problems. That hands-on station that everyone loves? It's getting 10x the use you planned for.
Smart design response: Build for 5x your projected traffic, then add safety margins.
Law #4: Complex Repairs Happen at the Worst Possible Times
Murphy's Law applies doubly to museum exhibits. The touchscreen will fail right before the VIP donor tour.
Smart design response: Design for graceful degradation. When part of the exhibit fails, the rest should still function.
The Modular Mindset
Think Lego, not sculpture. Design exhibits as systems of replaceable components rather than integrated artworks.
Component Accessibility: Can you reach every part that might need maintenance without dismantling half the exhibit? If not, redesign.
Standard Fasteners: Use screws and bolts that are readily available at any hardware store. Avoid proprietary connectors that require special orders from manufacturers who might not exist in five years.
Diagnostic Simplicity: When something stops working, can a non-expert quickly identify the problem? Visual indicators, clear troubleshooting steps, and logical component organization save countless hours.
The Long Game
Maintenance-friendly design isn't about creating boring exhibits—it's about creating exhibits that can continue to engage visitors year after year. The most innovative interactive in the world is useless if it's broken half the time.
The goal isn't to eliminate maintenance, but to make it predictable, manageable, and affordable. Design exhibits that age like fine wine, not like forgotten leftovers.
Visitors don't care how clever your engineering is—they care that the exhibit works when they want to engage with it. Design for reliability, and the innovation will take care of itself.
What's your most maintenance-friendly exhibit success story? Or your biggest maintenance nightmare that taught you valuable lessons? Share your war stories in the "Comments" Section below—we can all learn from each other's triumphs and disasters.
Paul Orselli writes the posts on ExhibiTricks. Paul likes to combine interesting people, ideas, and materials to make exhibits (and entire museums!) with his company POW! (Paul Orselli Workshop, Inc.) Let's work on a project together!
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