Last week I had a meeting on the Refugee Life exhibit for the Lied Discovery Children's Museum in Las Vegas. And while in Vegas, I couldn't help but participate a bit in the overarching economic powerhouse for the region. I played a few slot machines.
Things have come a long way from the "one-arm bandits" I remember. Most slot machines are pushbutton installations. (Even as we in museums tend to veer away from old-school pushbuttons toward more interesting real world interfaces, slot machines are successfully going the other direction). And the interface leaves much to be desired for newcomers -- there are a variety of options for multiple "lines" that you can play, and multiple winning pattern matches that vary from machine to machine. I gave up trying to figure out what was a "winner," and just trusted the machine to tell me when I won.
So why are they so successful? Stacey Mann, developer for the Refuge Life project and former Exploratorium staffer, points out how the whole environment is designed for extended involvement, from a lack of clocks to immersive visuals and sounds (including the pre-recorded sound of coins dropping, which doesn't really happen in the modern ticket based system). But also sheer motivation comes into play -- people like to win and make money, and even if it happens only occasionally the promise of it will be enough.
In exhibits too often we assume visitors have an intrinsic interest in the topic, and we ignore some of their more basic interests and motivations. These include motivations for:
- Winning things
- Shopping and eating (this is coming into play in a cultural exhibit I'm consulting on)
- Saying funny things to the person next to them
- Being seen by others as attractive and interesting
Many years ago, I proposed to a museum in Mexico a plan to use a giant spinning wheel (like "Wheel of Fortune") as an interface to an interactive program on cultural exploration. The budget unfortunately never panned out, but I'm sure it would have been popular. It might even have been effective.
There. Now I can justify the $40 I lost to the machines last week.
