Exploris
Exhibit - Number - Name: TW - B.06 - Stock Exchange
Kiosk Interactive Project Scope
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Exhibit Overview: Visitors use a computer program to learn more about how the stock market works and to build their own portfolio of stocks to follow at home or on the museum’s internet connections. See icon description below. (Note: There are other features to this computer, including websites to stock info and related sites as well as a connection to kids’ investment clubs around the world as they are contacted in the future.) Objectives: User will: 1) Understand that owning stock is one of the smartest ways to use your money and to control your own economic future. 2) Understand that buying a share is buying a piece of a company. Your share’s value depends upon the company’s success/failure and on the general health of the stock market. 3) Understand that the stock market is not as complicated as they may have previously imagined. 4) Understand that anyone can understand how to invest. Interactive Description: 1) Rest Mode: One splash page features the following: A) a “ticker tape” style moving sign across the screen. It is linked directly to on-line stock information from world stock exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange and the NC Stock Exchange. A manual override is built into this rest mode ticker tape icon to allow staff to stop the ticker and replace it with it with quotes by investors, proverbs, or humorous interactions with special groups coming through the exhibit. B) Background graphics with some of the beautiful motifs found on real stocks and bonds. We do not want graphics of the stock exchanges – showing frantic sellers/buyers, and chaos – this goes against the educational goals at this exhibit. C) A ICON in the form of a dollar bill. The face is ever changing though ranging from kids to adults (from the Exploris Middle School and Exploris staff ) to maybe even Marge Simpson (see episode where Marge joins an investment club) or Eddie Murphy or Dan Acroyd (with a clip from Trading Places) to Alan Greenspan.
2) Visitor activates icon dollar bill and one of the faces – selected randomly - says, “It’s a fact
of life: You’ll need money to get out in the world on your own. Hard-earned cash spent on shoes, movies, and jeans is gone once you’ve spent it. Hard-earned cash spent buying up shares of Reebok, The Gap, and other well-run companies is invested. It GROWS.” As the dollar sign is talking a graphic comes up showing the progress of money invested in stocks twenty years ago. Dollar sign character comments about the progress and explains that the stock exchange is not a gamble – over time it will reap benefits. This icon is the gateway into the program “On Your Own.” 3) The program brings up a series of four (4) interfaces:
Exploris
Kiosk Interactive Project Scope
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a) Interface 1: Visitor is asked to input some of their basic info: age, sex, school
grade/occupation, and favorite products. Dollar sign face talks to visitors telling them that this helps the computer figure out what companies they would be most interested in buying stock in. Interface 2: Computer brings up a list of companies the visitor may already know about and want to buy shares in. Dollar sign face asks visitors to choose the companies that make the products they use the most often or enjoy. Dollar sign character explains why the stock exchange helps companies grow and explains how once you buy stock you become part-owner of the company. Interface 3: The computer brings up a brief case symbol that the visitor may click to open and find company profiles of past performances and current stock value of their top three companies. Interface 4: Dollar sign character offers basic information on how to invest and highlights resources that help first-time investors. Interface 5: Dollar sign character provides visitors with basic information for following stocks in either the newspaper or on line. Last task for visitor is to look up the companies in their portfolio in the current News and Observer or New York Times that is kept at the countertop where this computer lives. Interface 6: Dollar sign characters explain what some of the hand signals are that are used on the floors of the New York Stock Exchange.
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4) The screen returns to rest mode after a set amount of time. Tone: Humorous, slapstick, a little “tongue in cheek, ” Seat Time: 2 - 3 minutes per visitor Assets: Exploris responsible for providing all faces and narration for the “talking dollar bill” FABRICATORS responsible for putting together stock portfolio selection program (see interface # 3) and providing link to live internet stock information within the tinker tape symbol in this program.