science_museum

							Design for Museum visitors
Presentation to UK UPA by Ben Gammon The Science Museum June 2004

What comment do children often make about the figures in the Apollo space capsule?

We followed two boys as they ignored the displays and systematically looked at every page in the ring-binders on the benches down the middle of the picture. Why did they do this?

Why do all all the ‘virtual keyboards’ on our touch screens laid out alphabetically?

What is the anti-gravity room?

What comment do children often make about the figures in the Apollo space capsule? We followed two boys as they ignored the displays and systematically looked at every page in the ring-binders on the benches down the middle of the picture. Why did they do this? Why do all all the ‘virtual keyboards’ on our touch screens laid out alphabetically?

‘Those are the astronauts’ bodies…’

The first page they looked at happened to show a photograph of some naked people. They were looking for more of the same. We need to slow visitors’ typing so the touch screens work properly. We don’t know. But every week we have people asking where it is in the museum.

What is the ‘anti gravity room’

A fundamental principle
Museum visitors are weird

Or maybe it’s us?

A museum exhibit - a thrust block from a steamship. How did our staff label it?

Thrust Block (1918)
This model shows the method of converting a multicollar thrust bearing into a modified form of the Michell thrust block. An early instance of such a conversion was applied in 1918 to the SS ’Hyson’, a single-screw steamer of 6,608 gross tonnage which was propelled by a set of triple-expansion engines. The ordinary horse-shoe shaped collars were removed and replaced by half the number of “bridges” each of which contains two Michell pads of a special type. These are arranged to lift, as in the Michell bearing, by means of radial hinge-pins and so allow a continuous film of oil to be maintained between the bearing surfaces.

A good exhibition balances
Visitors’ wants & needs The design idea

Museum’s agenda

Museum’s mission

We are not like visitors
And if we don’t take this into account things go horribly wrong

This exhibit cost tens of thousands of pounds. It was never tested because it was too expensive.

Step up to the exhibit and a cartoon character takes you through some complicated instructions (visitors skip them).

The character reappears in a new location.

Another task is introduced completing a puzzle.

To complete the puzzle, you must ‘research’ using an new metaphor - card indexes.

What went wrong
• Aims & objectives of the exhibit • Mistaking what we know with what visitors know • Nature of activity - jigsaw • Software - no prototype testing • Hardware - no prototype testing • Quality threshold

Don’t pick up the phone!
But the real problem always happened within 1 second of a user visiting the exhibit. Instead of waiting for a phone call, visitors would pick up the phone and hold it to their ear (people use phones differently in a museum than at home). This prevented other users from ‘calling’ them and no users ever used the exhibit successfully.

We learn most when we get things wrong
But we do also get things right

This exhibit successfully uses patterns and colour to make its point.

Children will happily spend hours on this exhibit

So here are some of the many things we’ve learnt

Design the Museum layout

Most museums are ‘brownfield sites’. It takes a long time to evolve towards a better layout.

Visitors agendas
Do they have “the knowledge?”
First timers vs. repeats

Importance of orientation
Visitors don’t like getting lost Chaos doesn’t work

This was supposed to be an interesting taster of all the exhibits. But for museum visitors, it was just a confusing jumble.

Plus …
5 art pieces Pattern Pod 5 Talking Points 4 Antenna Live Screens (plus info seats) • The Cube • • • • • Café • Imax desk & escalator • Simulators • Information terminals

Importance of orientation
Where am I? What this doing here

Curators like to present items neatly, with labels in tidy, organised sequences.

But when the same items are brought together to tell a story and hold more interest and value for visitors.

Designing exhibitions
Sometimes you just cannot be too blatant

Visitors assume that the topic of this gallery is ‘transport’ (their attention is drawn by the big, glamorous items). In fact, it’s a timeline of significant inventions.

This is probably significant - but its significance is lost when it’s placed next to an interesting traction engine, with no context to explain why it’s there.

This camera was used to take the famous picture of the girl fleeing her Vietnamese village with her skin burning after a napalm attack. But it’s lost in amongst the other objects.

Our redesign began by placing this barrier to slow visitors down. Hopefully they’d glance at it and see that it discussed the idea of timelines.

Then we had dates etched into the floor. Expensive but necessary.

Some things bear repetition
You can’t count on visitors doing what you expect

This gallery works fine if you come in the front door…

But most visitors come in via the side entrance, and so have to guess what it’s about. We should have repeated the introduction here.

This gallery includes odd peanut objects on the left…

Each one contains a number of displays…

The displays in each peanut concentrate on one theme. If you stop somewhere by this peanut, you’ll get at least part of the meaning. If you look at several of the displays the point will be rammed home.

Designing interactive exhibits
If they possibly can they wont read instructions

People learn by watching others and by doing. This girl’s gaze is falling on the instructions…

Which are clear, well placed and well written. But she’s copying the (wrong) actions of the previous visitor.

Sometimes you just have to ask “why would anyone want to do that?”

Turn the bricks to the right combinations of food and a little light shines on the top. There are millions of wrong combinations and only one right one. It could take days to get the right answer. Why would anyone bother?

Visiting a museum is a social occasion
Hardly anyone visits a museum alone

Couples and family groups are the vast majority of visits (adults use children as proxy visitors on the interactive displays to avoid looking stupid in public).

This ring binder is cheaper than an etched label. But it’s impossible for a group to use it satisfactorily. So most visitors don’t get any value from it.

Sometime you can just be too clever for your own good

To show that these calipers were used to measure bumps on people’s heads (a quack approach to psychology), the exhibition designer showed them measuring a plastic dinosaur. Was this a clever way to express this idea?

How are visitors suppose to know that?
Just control yourself!

This display has tens of input devices. It was interesting to build but impossibly complex to use.

And many more …
• In the end no substitute for testing • Always remember you are not a visitor • Visiting a museum is not the same as sitting in a classroom; being on the internet; reading a book at home …