Trick or Treat? What Halloween Can Teach Us About Exhibit Development
It's October, which means plastic skeletons are already hanging from porches here on Long Island, grocery stores have been selling candy corn since roughly Labor Day, and somewhere a museum educator is trying to fit "pumpkin" into a STEM program for the third year running.
But Halloween has been rattling around in my head for a different reason. Every Halloween night, millions of kids walk up to strangers' front doors and run the world's oldest visitor experience test: Is this house worth it? Turns out, that question says a lot about how we develop exhibits.
So, in the spirit of the season, here are a few Tricks and Treats for exhibit developers!
TREAT: The front porch is your exhibit entrance.
Kids decide which houses to visit in about three seconds flat. Porch light on? Pumpkins out? Somebody in a goofy costume handing out candy? That's a yes. Dark windows and a "No Soliciting" sign? Keep walking.
Visitors make the same snap judgments at your gallery entrance. If the threshold doesn't signal "something fun is happening in here," a big chunk of your audience will drift right past. You need clear, inviting cues that say "come on in." Light, color, sound, and something to do right at the start go a long way.
TRICK: Don't hand out the raisins.
We all remember the house that gave out tiny boxes of raisins. Or toothbrushes. Technically, those houses participated in Halloween. Nobody went back.
How many exhibits are the raisin box of the museum world? The "interactive" that's really a flip label. The touchscreen kiosk that turns out to be a slideshow of the text panel next to it. The well-meaning "learning station" that feels suspiciously like homework. Visitors can smell a box of raisins from across the gallery. If you're promising a treat, deliver one.
TREAT: Full-size candy bars stick with you forever.
Every neighborhood has The House. The one with the full-size candy bars. Kids talk about it for years, and plan their routes around it.
Exhibits can be The House, too, and it rarely takes a giant budget. It takes generosity. A genuinely open-ended activity. Real objects people can actually handle. A staff member or volunteer who's delighted to be there. Visitors remember generosity of experience, and it's often cheaper than whatever expensive "wow" element sits in your budget line.
TRICK: Beware the haunted (technology) house.
You know the elaborate yard display with the animatronic witch that's supposed to cackle when you walk by? By about 7:30 PM on Halloween night, half of them are frozen mid-cackle. I'm not anti-technology (really!), but I've seen far too many exhibits where the flashy digital element was the first thing to break and the last thing to get fixed.
Before you build the haunted house, ask: What happens to the visitor experience when this thing goes dark? If the answer is "nothing works anymore," you might want to rethink the plan. A good old-fashioned jack-o'-lantern still glows when the power goes out.
TREAT: Costumes are an invitation to play.
Halloween's magic is that everyone gets permission to pretend—even the grown-ups. Especially the grown-ups.
Dress-up and role-play areas are sometimes dismissed as "just for little kids," but watch what happens at a history museum when visitors try on a period hat, or at a science center when someone slips into a lab coat. People of all ages lean in. Permission to play is one of the most powerful (and least expensive!) tools in the exhibit developer's toolbox.
TRICK: Scary is good. Confusing is not.
A good haunted house is scary in a designed way: you know where to walk, the scares are paced, and you come out laughing. A bad one is just dark and disorienting, and you leave annoyed.
Exhibits that take on difficult or challenging subjects can (and should!) be powerful and even unsettling. But there's a big difference between intentional emotional impact and plain old visitor confusion caused by poor wayfinding, muddled sequencing, or labels nobody can read. Make sure your visitors are feeling what you intended them to feel.
TREAT: Go back for seconds.
The best trick-or-treaters circle back to their favorite houses. (Don't pretend you never did it.)
That's really the ultimate test for any exhibit: Do people want to come back? Do they bring friends? Do they tell the story of their visit afterward?
Prototyping, observing visitors, and tweaking based on what we see is how we learn which of our "houses" are worth a second trip — and which ones are handing out raisins.
Happy Halloween, everyone! 🎃
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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