30 Mini Hands-On Exhibits, 2 Weeks, 1 Portable STEM Museum

This week's post about an interesting exhibit approach is courtesy of Winifred Kehl.

Winifred is a science writer and museum exhibit developer who specializes in informal science education. She especially loves creative projects that help people engage with science & scientists (and vice versa!). You can find her online at www.winifredkehl.com.






How do you come up with, prototype, and launch 30 hands-on science exhibits in 2 weeks?

More importantly – why? Why would any exhibit designer do this to themselves? Because it’s worth the crazy-making!

A couple months ago I read about the Uni Project on AAM’s blog.  Based in New York, the Uni Project is a portable reading room made up of lightweight cubes that lock together to form a freestanding bookshelf. Local libraries and museums have “curated” cubes, selecting and donating books. The Uni can be deployed in almost any public space – library common rooms, parks, etc. – and anyone can walk up, borrow a book, and sit down on one of the Uni’s portable benches to read. The idea behind the Uni Project is to showcase learning – make it visible! And encourage people to do more of it.

I loved the idea immediately. I contacted the creators about getting a Uni Project started in Seattle, Washington. It turned out that another group in Seattle – the Foundation for Early Learning – was interested in starting a Seattle Uni Project. Both FEL and I were interested in creating a STEM-themed Uni Project (that’s Science, Technology, Engineering & Math). They had already purchased the physical structure for a Uni Project and were looking for someone to curate activities for the cubes. The only catch – they needed to launch a prototype in just 2 weeks.

It’s a good thing that everyone agreed the launch would be a prototype, because this was a learning process for all of us. We brainstormed a list of age-appropriate STEM activities that might work in the Uni format, adapted from books and educational websites. I rounded up my craft supplies, dusted off my hot glue gun, and started building prototypes.

I quickly gained a renewed appreciation for mommy bloggers – they made it look so easy! Their model of a jellyfish made out of a plastic grocery bag looked so real it convinced me until I read the caption. Mine looked like a sad, failed kindergarten craft project.

“A” for effort… maybe.

Soon, craft supplies exploded over my entire living room. Felt, thread, buttons, and velcro crept from the table, across the floor, and over the couch.

At some point there just wasn’t time to fiddle with the prototypes anymore (that point was late in the evening before we launched). In the morning, we packed everything up and hauled it to a plaza in the middle of downtown Seattle.

Despite a classic Seattle drizzle, quite a few people were interested to see what we were setting up. After the canopy was up and the portable cubbies filled with activities, it didn’t take long for curious passers-by and families to explore our Uni cubes.

Some of our activities were obvious duds. The model of the Earth had very little interpretation, and wasn’t much fun to play with by itself. I suppose we should have seen that coming. Other activities were instant hits. The “dinosaur dig” boxes – clear Tupperware tubs filled with lentils, fake dinosaur bones, and paint brushes for “excavation” – were in high demand. (As a veteran of a few Dino Days at the Burke Museum, I had anticipated these being popular, and made two.) Other activities surprised us – the “balloon rocketship” activity was neglected in its box until the volunteers set up a demonstration and started helping kids tape their balloons to the straw and launch them. Suddenly, kids couldn’t get enough of it, and the volunteers were busy for the rest of the afternoon launching balloon rockets.

As the rain increased later in the afternoon, our audience melted away, but overall the launch seemed pretty successful. We managed to get some comment cards on what our visitors felt worked and what didn’t, and came away with positive reviews and a lot of ideas to improve the activities. The main observation I made during the afternoon was that parents needed much more detailed instructions than what we assumed they’d need. Our activities weren’t always as self-explanatory as we had thought they would be.

The FEL STEM Uni has since been deployed several times around Puget Sound.  I am eagerly awaiting another chance to see it in action. It will be interesting to see how the project matures.


Thanks Winifred, for sharing your experiences with the Uni Project approach!



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Kickstart This: LUMO

We've posted before about those cool Canadians from PO-MO Inc. 

PO-MO makes interactive displays involving projection technologies for corporate and museum clients, but now they've launched a Kickstarter campaign for a new consumer-oriented project called LUMO.  (As you can see in the video at the top of this post.)

LUMO is billed as the "world's first interactive projector for kids" but I'd say any maker or museum exhibit person who is interested in playing around with whole body motion control technology should check out the Kickstarter and PO-MO's website to find out more!

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Road Trip Inspiration: Science Gallery Dublin

You know the feeling when you keep bumping into a new (to you!) place or idea everywhere?

I keep having that feeling about Science Gallery Dublin --- it keeps popping up in conversations with colleagues, on the Web, and in radio programs.  So much so, I'm saving my pennies for a visit to Dublin to see it myself.

Science Gallery International was started by Trinity College Dublin in 2012 with the aim of creating a global network of Science Gallery locations in partnership with leading universities and research centers in key urban locations.

It seems like the Science Gallery chooses themes, like their current show called Illusion, and then partners with all sorts of interesting folks (be they scientists, researchers, artists, or even magicians) to create dynamic displays and performances. 

"Blood Wars" is an edgy example from a recent show at Science Gallery about the body.  Basically, blood is drawn from visitors and transferred into Petri dishes.  The blood cells then "fight" each other through a series of matches that produce a "winner," but that also foster discussions about blood types, cells, and the like.

It all seems like incredibly cool stuff, and a twist on the traditional science center model.

So, while I'm saving for my trip, if anyone has actually been to Science Gallery in Dublin, let us know in the "Comments" Section below!


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Revealing Process to Relieve Museum Visitor Boredom?

Museums are great at showing off end-products, but the process(es) that created those products --- not so much.

Every time I'm in an art museum and hear someone nearby mutter "my kid could do a better job than that ..." I think that if only the disgruntled visitor could get a better sense of HOW the artist created the artwork in question, that they might feel differently.

But in many museums (especially art and history museums) visitors are faced with thousands of items plainly presented with the assumption that any "thoughtful" person will simply be amazed/inspired/transported by what's on display.  And what many visitors often find "boring" about museums is this endless parade of encased or hung objects without any context.

So what's to be done?  I'd say it's no accident that two of the current trends in museums relate directly to this context/process challenge in museum exhibition design:

• The rise of co-curated or community-curated exhibitions deliberately busts the normally opaque process open, and gives people a sense of the messiness involved in creating what often is seen as a tidy end result.  Of equal importance, creative/community partners take tremendous pride and ownership in the end results.

• Maker spaces or design education spaces inside museums (including non-science museums like the Denver Art Museum) give visitors an opportunity to directly participate in activities that interest them and that "pull back the curtain" on many, many aspects of the processes involved in creating products.


Of course large, traditional collection-based institutions may find it hard to pivot toward more process-oriented exhibition experiences.  However, even straightforward approaches in exhibition design can address this. 

Take for example the "Hopper Drawing" exhibition currently on view at The Whitney Museum of American Art.  The basic premise is simple: display classic paintings by Edward Hopper alongside preparatory drawings of those same paintings to give visitors a better sense of the artist's evolving and changing process.

Perhaps if more museums could become as involved in revealing process as well as product, fewer visitors would think of museums as "boring."

Have you visited a museum or exhibition recently that adeptly revealed process?  Then give a shout out in the "Comments" Section below!


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User-Centered Design: An Interview with Margaret Middleton

Margaret Middleton designs exhibits and environments at Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. She is an artist and craftsperson with a passion for designing and creating beautiful, functional spaces, unique props, and imaginative costumes.  Margaret was kind enough to answer some questions for ExhibiTricks readers below:


What’s your educational background?
I have a BFA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. I had trouble deciding whether to be an engineer or an artist so industrial design seemed like a good compromise. Turns out it's also a perfect background for exhibition design.



What got you interested in Museums?   Growing up, going to museums was a favorite family activity and we liked them all --- art, history, science, you name it. I loved museums so much I would make my own at home. I’d start by burying stuff in the backyard so I could be an archaeologist and dig it up. Then I’d display my artifacts in elaborate exhibits in my bedroom with a gift shop in the hallway and a sign on the door. I’d give my family a hand-drawn brochure, take their tickets and invite them into my museum.

Even though I was a museum entrepreneur at age 7, I didn’t know I wanted to make museums my career until I was halfway through with college. I’d been working at Providence Children’s Museum and when they hired on exhibit designer Chris Sancomb he let me follow him around and help him out. I knew right away I wanted to be just like him. 4 years later I was the exhibit designer at Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose.



Tell us a little bit about how your “non-museum” skills/activities inform your exhibit design work?  I don’t have non-museum skills.

But seriously, one interest of mine that I consider "cross-training" is event and program planning. All the considerations that go into it, from the agenda to the room setup to the snack choices, it's basically user-focused experience design. The big difference is that an event or program is a temporal experience with a host so it's easier to guide a participant through a program and you can control the experience better than you can with an exhibit. Scaffolding, story-telling, and being a good host are all things I learn from event design and apply to exhibit design.



What are the ways you think about making your projects accessible to the widest range of visitors?  I'm working on this theory right now that, anti-intuitive as it may seem, exhibits that use specific, personal stories have more universal appeal than ones that stay broad and general.

It's a common misconception that when you're making a cultural or historical exhibit you need to keep the narrative broad so you don't alienate anyone by getting too specific. We think that if we keep things vague people will be able to see themselves in the exhibit because hey, we're all people. But it turns out that you end up alienating everyone because no one can relate to these generic stories with no juicy details. The details are what make personal stories relatable. The best way to help visitors see themselves in the exhibit is to ask them good questions and invite them to share their own personal stories in the exhibit.

For a specific, personal story about this technique in action, check out this video I made: http://vimeo.com/69290692 



What are some of your favorite online (or offline!) resources for people interested in finding out more about accessible exhibition development?  Anything about user-centered design. I like Planning for People in Museums by Kathy McLean and Dana Mitroff's Interview Tips from her website "Design Thinking for Museums." An accessible exhibit is one that puts the visitor first. 



What advice would you have for fellow museum professionals in thinking about making their work accessible to all visitors?   Learn how to listen to visitors and ask them the right questions. This is design research --- any of those user-centered design books should cover it. Research should have a goal and a plan for how to use the information gathered. The questions need to be questions you actually want answers to.

And for goodness sake, if you're going through the trouble of putting together an advisory panel (which you should) then listen to them. It's not easy to admit you're wrong, but advisers (and evaluators for that matter) are not there to support and reinforce the decisions you already made.

Also, your mere gesture of engaging community members does not mean you will automatically achieve "buy-in" from them. If your advisory panel doesn't like your ideas, you can't spend the rest of your time with them justifying your ideas. There's a big difference between "buy-in" and "coercion." And "we don't have time" is no excuse.  If you don't have time to respond to what you learn, don't engage an advisory panel to begin with. 



Can you talk a little about some of your current projects?   Right now we're revamping an exhibit about healthy eating. Rainbow Market is made up of three linked environments where you can select, "cook", and "eat" healthy food- a farmers' market, a home kitchen, and a food truck. I'm particularly excited about some of the details we're incorporating to feel like an authentic San Jose experience --- like the iron scrollwork window grate of the home kitchen, the local food map in the farmers' market, and our plan to make a Yelp page for our food truck so visitors can review all the delicious plastic food they enjoyed at the Museum. 



What do you think is the “next frontier” for museums?  One trend that I'm appreciating in museums is the genuine interest and validation of visitors' personal experiences. It's an important step in the democratizing of the museum experience. 



If money were no object, what would your “dream” exhibit project be?   I'd love to be part of an exhibition about gender, inspired by the Science Museum of Minnesota's incredible Race exhibition. Race is challenging, poignant, and so necessary. It'd be great to take what we've learned from that exhibition and apply it to similarly fraught topics.

Some day I'd like to open an art museum specifically for families. All too often art exhibits for children seem too self conscious --- they have a way of separating out disciplines like visual art and science in this forced, artificial way that grownups prefer to categorize the world.

I think it's a big assumption to make that children would relate to those categories the same way grownups do. I'd love to create experiences that are seamlessly blended instead of layered, using art as a lens for looking at the world and responding to it. Children think nothing of using their innate creativity and science skills simultaneously, but it might challenge some grownups' assumptions.



Thanks so much Margaret for sharing your thoughts with ExhibiTricks readers, especially the idea of using event and program planning as "cross-training" for exhibits work.



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Be In The Next Cheapbook!

Over the years, I've been happy to have started and edited three volumes of the Cheapbooks (collections of inexpensive exhibit ideas from museum folks from around the world ) for ASTC --- the Association of Science-Technology Centers. 

If you don't already have or know about the Cheapbooks, the ASTC Publications Department is running a special three volume "bundle deal" right now on their website.  Get the Cheapbooks even cheaper!

I'm excited that ASTC has asked me to work on a fourth Cheapbook volume, which will be a little different from the previous editions, and I'd like to start gathering submissions for new exhibit "how-tos" for Cheapbook 4. 

So if you have a great (inexpensive) exhibit that you'd like to share with the rest of the museum world, just send me an email so I can give you more details.

And stay tuned to ExhibiTricks for more details about Cheapbook 4!


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