Museum Techmuse

Boston Stories meeting

Just got out of the Boston Stories luncheon meeting -- culmination of years of work by Mike Spock and team distilling the essence of how they managed to change the nature of museum exhibits in the 1960s and beyond at Boston's Children's Museum.

I was fortunate to tap into this work while I was Technology Developer at the Museum from 1988 to 1998. Great to reconnect with friends and colleagues whose work has deeply changed the experience of visitors.

The project site is at: http://bcmstories.com. Special thanks to Nina Simon and Gabriella Marks for taking the site to the next level. And it's still evolving. To my friends in the museum community: how might this site be made even more relevant to you? What features would you like to see?

From Museum to YouTube to PBS

We had the pleasure of doing a StoryKiosk installation at the Levine Museum of the New South, an innovative IMLS funded museum in Charlotte focused on recent cultural history in Charlotte and the South. A central goal of the installation was to provide a place at the end of the exhibit where visitors could contribute their own stories to questions like "Which part of the exhibit did you find especially moving? Why?", and "What advice would you give to someone moving to this region?"

Select stories are displayed in a large screen animation outside the booth. But the visitor stories get high visibility playback outside the exhibit as well. The Museum is uploading compiled stories to their YouTube Channel. And, in a unique relationship with their local PBS station WTVI, select stories gathered in the exhibit booth are broadcast in a special series WTVI is doing throughout the year on cultural change in the Charlotte area.

The installation points to the potential for extending the reach of visitor-created media, from exhibit to social sites like YouTube, to local PBS stations.

CSI installation: Dublin

I'm back, with jet lag, from the StoryKiosk installation in "CSI: The Experience" in Dublin. The installation is part of the popular exhibit developed by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History a couple years ago, now on its parallel tour through Europe.

Very interesting to see how museum exhibits can fan their way out into other public venues beyond museum walls. In Dublin, the exhibit is running at the Ambassador Theatre, a historic building tracing its roots back to 1764, now a venue for special events. And soon it will open at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Very interesting indeed, as we think about new types of venues for popular exhibits.

For me, the project was a dream come true -- I started in the museum field a couple decades ago with a special interest in uses of technology that encourage communication across cultures.  Now I've got my radar set on projects that include international teams focusing these topics...

New iPhone 3GS

I couldn't resist, and got my new iPhone 3GS on the first day available, a few hours ago.  Drove in to the Apple Store -- it was busy but not crazy. Because I had pre-ordered mine, they had me stand in a special roped-off line. (But, in fact, I was the only person in that line and felt a bit foolish as other people were walking around freely).

It feels a lot like my old (original) iPhone.  In fact, I might have been a bit disappointed except for a few showy new apps that made me realize this is a new phone altogether.  The compass is beautifully designed and makes me want to go look for buried treasure. And the Voice Recorder brings up a classic microphone and VU meter, although I can't get the meter to move as dramatically as I'd like.

But the really big feature I think is the ability to encode photos and video with GPS location data, something with huge potential for museums. Plus the ability to easily, seamlessly upload video to YouTube. I'll be exploring these in more detail...

AAM and ACM: A view from the exhibit hall

Just wrapping a week in Philly for the AAM and ACM conferences, and though the numbers were smaller -- AAM reportedly had about half the usual attendees this year because of financial conditions in museums -- the conversations were good. Definitely worthwhile.

Several exhibitors reported that they were as busy as ever on projects, an assessment I concur with.  But maybe there's a dynamic here -- that we may be riding a wave of funding committed before the crash, and that it will catch up with us in the next 6 months.  Museums may lag behind the economy, offset a bit by funding cycles.  Hard to say.

ACM Conference: Pecha Kucha Night

Gave my first Pecha Kucha presentation a couple nights ago at the Association of Children's Museums annual conference in Philly. The session, organized by the ever savvy duo Paul Orselli and Peter Exley, allowed half a dozen or so of us to show 20 slides for 20 seconds each. And that's it.

I talked about (or tried to talk about in that time) how physical movement -- in particular Shintaido -- has influenced my work in exhibit media design. How a good exhibit is like an effective cut with a sword, expressive and connected with our partner/audience. To illustrate, I included this shot of me cutting my friend Mary with a wooden sword (which earned me a certain reputation later in the exhibit hall).

Still musing...

Things have been pretty busy the last several months with installations at Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, ECHO Lake Science Center, Levine Museum of the New South, Illinois Holocaust Museum, and others in the works. A blessing in this economy. But I've let a lot of thoughts slip by that I wanted to share. Here are a few thoughts -- more detail sometime soon:

• Post visit audience: it may be more effective to design for specific groups (after school groups, moms clubs, etc) than generalized visitors. Need to tap into pre-motivated learners.
• What's after Web 2.0?  Now that social media has arrived, what's next?  We need to provide visitors a big picture mission (solving some local community issue) that raises the level of communication.
• iPhone: the power of place.  If we're looking to change visitor behavior, we need to be in the right place at the right time. iPhone apps have potential to do that.
• YouTube stories: the emerging trend of including visitor voices on museum YouTube channels

Text messaging for museums: lessons from Obama

I've long been interested in how museums can use technology to encourage new behaviors among visitors after their visit. One of the remarkable things from this past election here in the U.S. is the way the Obama team used text messaging (and other technologies) to motivate supporters with the right message at the right time. Here are a few principles that can be translated to museum projects:

• Heighten interest (and opt-in participation) by releasing specific intriguing information first via text messaging. (Say, for example, a VP pick, or the answer to a mystery posed in an exhibit).
• Scaffold resources into the message: a phone number or URL to get more info about a program the visitor has already expressed interest in.
• Be clear about the specific action step the visitor should take: vote, or attend tomorrows' harvest festival with a friend.
• Provide the message at just the right time: the day before elections, or two days before festival registration deadlines.
• Be judicious about the number of messages sent: just when they are needed, no more, no less...

NPR Series: Museums and the 21st Century

NPR is doing a series over the next month or so on museums in the 21st century. I had the pleasure of participating yesterday in an interview that will probably air sometime around Dec 22nd. The focus was on childrens' museums and technology, and we talked about topics like parent/child interaction with technologies (what role do parents have in an interactive?), and the special focus on visitors that childrens museums have. This focus on visitor experience is something that shapes everything childrens' musems do, including the use of interactive technologies.

The first part of the series aired a few days ago, you can find it here (thanks to Jenifer Trant for scouting this out).

Children's Museums and Technology talking points

Going in to NPR tomorrow to talk about children's museums and technology. Here are some of the things I'm thinking about:

1. Children’s museums are visitor-centered. This is the starting point for design. Not collections, but who is walking in the door, and what are their needs. “How can we help our visitors?” – a simple question that is powerful when you look at it more closely.
2. Children’s museums in general are wary of technology. Kids have fewer options for physical experiences, and technology is seen a potential diversion from physical experience. (On the flip side, technologies for communication and personal expression are valued).
3. “Interactivity” is most often between people rather than with a particular exhibit or technology. The museum experience is a social experience.
4. An emerging trend: using technology to encourage real-world activity. (includes websites such as Good to Grow and others with specific resources for local activity).
5. Another trend: using technology to value visitors’ own experience. Ask them to share their experience with other visitors.