Museum Techmuse

Social issues: visitors as animations

As museums become more audience-centered, a major trend over the last 20 years, our exhibit interactives also focus more on the visitor experience. What is their experience?  How do they react to the topics in our exhibits?  Visitors' communication about their own experience is central to exhibit-based learning, as Minda Borun, Lynn Dierking and others have been telling us for years.

For our recent installation at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, we had an interesting challenge -- to develop an engaging format that encourages kids to talk about how the would react to difficult situations they might encounter, such as bullying, assimilating to a new culture, and neighborhood violence. We developed an animated program that allows visitors to become an animated character, recording their reactions, then seeing themselves responding in the context of the animation. I'm very happy with the result, and the way it provides a structure that encourages communication based on individual experience.

Opening animation: bullying

Visitor records a response

Visitor becomes part of the animation

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.

 

Twitter Experiment, Pt 2.

Some time ago I posted thoughts about potential use of Twitter in cultural exhibits (and had some good conversations with Shelley Mannion about her very interesting work with the Tibetan teens in Switzerland). The ability to quickly compare experiences among cultural groups seemed promising.

I've continued to play with Twitter, and had an interesting experience this morning when I was in Harvard Square. I posted an entry about looking at sunlight on the bricks in Harvard Square. Within an hour, I received a notice that my postings were compiled ("followed") by another user, "Harvard Square Now!". And this seemed to be a compilation of all the postings containing "Harvard Square" in the text.

That kind of automatic compilation is pretty amazing. A shared experience in a public space. I'm thinking of implications for other major cultural venues, like Ellis Island, or the Holocaust Museum, where it's likely people will be posting about their experiences regularly...

Falling for Science: Sherry Turkle's new book

Attended a lunch meeting at the MIT Media Lab last week in which Sherry Turkle talked about the new book she's edited: "Falling for Science: Objects in Mind." One of the basic premises of the book is that kids' love for science often grows out of a special relationship with a particular object such as sandcastles, crystal radios, mud, and even My Little  Pony (whose braided tail played a special role in the formation of mathematical thought for one student.)

One of the key steps in the process is to guide children toward objects they love -- and she places a good deal of attention on the role of affect and love (thus the title "Falling for Science"...)

This reminds me of the close connection to pioneering exhibit developer Bernie Zubrowski's early work at Boston's Children's Museum focusing on everyday materials such as soap bubbles in exhibits. Bernie emphasizes materials that kids can easily get their hands on at home.

Where is this all leading us in museums? It's a reminder that one of the best things we can do is point visitors toward extended exploration with materials at home, using technology to provide the right message at the right time to facilitate this...