Congratulations to Rich Faron and Jessica Banda! Recently,
Rich and Jessica had an article published in the Exhibitionist, a highly esteemed journal among museum professionals
published by the National Association for Museum Exhibition. Following the theme of this Spring edition,
the article, “Exhibition Carts: Intentionally Designed Spaces on the Move,”
explores the program cart as an intentionally designed space. As the program carts are a favorite here at
Museum Explorer, you can bet we are excited about this publication. You can
read the full article below, but click this link to view it in its entirety on the official NAME website (pictures
included)!
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| The Cover of the Issue, "Spring 2014: Intentionally Designed Spaces" |
Exhibition
Carts: Intentionally Designed Spaces on the Move
By
Rich Faron and Jessica Banda
The
intentionality behind all design work is problem-solving. While many forms of design
process exist, history and tradition reveal that until recently, the typical
exhibit developer-engaged in efforts defined by hours of talking, researching,
coffee clutching, sketching, pencil sharpening, mouse pushing, ceiling staring and
wishful thinking—hoping for that “a-ha!” moment. Recently, though (and
especially over the last 10 years), conscious advancements have been made to
sharpen the lens of the overall design process by refocusing attention on meeting audience needs and expectations with
conscious intent.
The
biggest changes have come about in the area of upfront investigation: the collecting
and collating of data regarding the end user.
- Who is the visitor?
- What are visitor interests?
- What do they care about?
- What are their needs?
- What is the spatial context?
This surge
in audience research has transformed the once opaque process of exhibit design
into something much more transparent, allowing designers to organize the entire
process into four distinct steps - 1)Investigate
& Analyze; 2)Concept & Test; 3)Revise
& Design; and 4), Build &
Implement. In order to differentiate
this approach from more traditional forms of design problem-solving, we now refer to the entire process as experience design. And note that the word ‘experience’
replaces ‘exhibit’ here—not merely for buzz benefit, but because experience design indicates a greater
possibility to approach design with some form of intent. Today, a more
discriminating public is looking for both excitement and educational
enrichment. The stakes are higher than ever for modern museums, zoos, and
aquariums because every destination must be visitor-centered. The goal: be
prepared to capture and hold the imagination of an always-evolving audience
free to make choices: free to go elsewhere and free to do something different.
Carts as Intentionally
Designed Spaces
Program
carts are wonderful tools for responding to this increasing pressure facing
exhibitors. As a method of flexible
program delivery, these carts provide activities that fulfill
a variety of purposes, from conveying mission content, to serving as a changing
marquee, to supporting local school curricula.
Because carts bring staff, objects, and an exhibit-like experience into
direct contact with visitors, they provide an intimate and
simple means for establishing and building a dialogue with the public. As self-contained platforms, carts are spaces that are able to move throughout
a facility in order to find people, deliver an experience, and start an
open-ended face-to-face exchange. Simply
put, this new approach allows public programmers to intentionally develop,
design and deliver customized experiences that
are all at once interactive, compact, and mobile.
To realize intent, a simple set of three standard
reference points or new tools have been developed that help keep the designer
on track, offering a universal method for tinkering throughout the process no
matter the museum, mission, or
message. Our designers at Museum Explorer
keep the following principles close at hand throughout the process of creating
exhibition carts:
• HEAD
Target visitor interest. Give the audience something to wonder about.
Develop
and design a content highlight, some nugget of information that ignites
interest and invites direct exploration and
inquiry. (Give people something to
THINK about).
• HEART
Appeal to visitor awareness. Define an intimate environment. Design
clear conduits that allow the audience to make a
personal connection with the program
narrative. Discover a way to incorporate a center
of awareness in every cart design. (Help
people
find something to CARE about).
• HANDS
Engage visitor curiosity. Welcome the audience to put their hands on
things.
Merge visitor interactivity with the overall flow
and story arch of the program. Create simple
and comfortable physical connections that
stimulate natural human curiosity and encourage
discovery through sharing and conversation. (Give
people something to DO).
As varied examples of how intentionally designed program carts are created
for various settings (an art museum, a history museum, and zoo), this article
will discuss the following carts: “Art à la Cart,” “History à la Cart,” and
“Animals
Like Us,”
Carts Build
Visitor Collaboration and Engagement: Smithsonian American Art Museum
The design process for program carts at the
Smithsonian American Art Museum, was primarily a matter of shifting a
perception about the nature of these carts. Jennifer Brundage, National
Outreach Manager at the Smithsonian Institution, spoke to the concept of mobile
learning centers in 2011. In an entry
for the Smithsonian’s Affiliate blog,
Brundage confessed that she had “come to think of educational carts in the
galleries as the Clydesdales of the field – the workhorses that are low-tech,
straightforward” (2011). Fortunately
though, Brundage went on to admit that she was “wrong” about her initial notion
of program carts, changing her mind after a 2011 brown bag lunch session where
educators at the Smithsonian gathered for a presentation by guest speakers Rich
Faron of Museum Explorer and Heidi Moisan from the Chicago History Museum
regarding program carts—at the behest of Susan Nichols. Brundage reflected afterward that, “through a
slideshow of case studies and prototypes it became clear that their examples
did not reflect the cart [she] had come to stereotype.” Rather, “they presented carts as an
appealing, active launch pad for visitor team-building, collaboration and a deeper
engagement with exhibitions” (Brundage, March 22, 2011).
As visitor collaboration is not something that
often occurs in quiet art museums, bringing this object into the Smithsonian
American Art Museum of all places was something of a novel idea. The simple intent of moving a program cart (a
box) into a gallery (four walls covered in expensive art), can be a challenge
in such a conservative setting. But the
SAAM wanted direct and active visitor engagement, so Museum Explorer created
“Art à la Cart”: five mobile carts for use throughout the Museum that further
engage visitors with artwork by providing interactive hands-on activities for
them. Though all white in design with
simple stark flags, these Art à la carts are still a colorful idea in such a
prestigious setting.
Carts Empower Visitors to Interact with History: Chicago History
Museum
At the
Chicago History Museum, program carts address a need for a very specific
audience. Here, history is not locked away in vaults or even behind glass
(with some exceptions), but rather is made accessible to visitors—especially
young local students—through inviting dialogue, opportunities to touch, and
descriptive but relatable museum labels to provide a full historical experience. Exhibition carts
naturally fit into an environment like this, providing a different platform for
making history accessible through direct visitor engagement.
As part
of the “History à la Cart” program, we designed multiple mobile learning carts
for the museum, including “Prairie Landscape” and “The Great Chicago Fire.” When Chicago Public School children come to
learn about these locally-important moments in history, they actively implement
their learning. For example, they can
physically measure how tall prairie grass was in order to visualize early
Chicago, and they can map the path of the Great Chicago fire to assess the vast
scope of the damage.
According
to Lynn McRainey, Director of Education at the Chicago History Museum, carts
such as these “define a place where collaboration, conversations and children’s
curiosity are a priority” (personal communication, December 2013). In an
environment where so many young students come to enhance their learning at
school, the “History à la Cart” program at CHM provide spaces (six exhibition
carts, to be precise) complimenting school curriculum. Here, carts
“empower children to move out of their passive roles of being told history into
active participants in the discovery process”
(personal communication, December 19, 2013).
Carts Encourage
Exploration and Enable Visitors to Control their Experience: Lincoln Park Zoo
Allison Price, Director of Education at the
Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, at first questioned program carts’ abilities to
hold on to visitors. The intentional design process “proved its mettle” on
their program cart “Animals Like Us,” a collaborative effort with Museum
Explorer Inc. Through a series of
probing questions and trial and error, Price and her team discovered that their
typical “show and tell” program delivery was not working with audiences. “[My team at Lincoln Park Zoo] kept coming
back to our guest experience. What
should a visit to a cart feel like? What should guests be able to do?,” Price
asked. The answer to these questions was
simple. They deduced that “guests should
be able to explore the animal kingdom on their own terms,” and should “walk
away not just with information, but with provocation.” As a result, the
designers decided “ Animals Like Us” and its program would be designed “so that
the guests control the program flow, and so that exploration is valued equal to
or more than information”(personal communication, December 3,2013).
Designing a cart for a zoo setting proved to have its own
challenges. In this space, there are many
stimuli competing for attention – sights, sounds, smells, flavors. In order to become its own space in a place
like this, a program cart has to be colorful and loud and inviting all on its
own. “Animals Like Us” was created for
the Lincoln Park Zoo with these qualities in mind, offering colorful and large
signs, real animal skulls for visitor engagement, and a life-size human model
standing adjacent to it. This cart has
no problem maintaining its own space.
“What resulted from our probing questions [in the design
process] is a cart that, since its unveling, has captivated everyone from the 5
year-old to the 95 year-old, first-time visitors and long-time trustees,” Price
says (personal communication). Indeed,
data supported Price’s findings. A 2013
study conducted by the Garibay Group on program carts at the Lincoln Park Zoo
(including “Animals Like Us”), reported that,
“on a scale from 1 to 4 (1 being ‘disagree strongly’ and 4 being ‘agree
strongly’), 149 of 150 respondents rated their agreement with the statement ‘We
really enjoyed our experience at the station’ as a 3 or 4” (2013). Research typically focuses on quantitative
data about what visitors learned, but it is important to note that this
particular study also takes enjoyment into account. Enjoyment is not often cited as a reason for
what people get out of a visit to a museum or zoo, but this evaluation strongly
emphasized that “visitors enjoyed their experiences at the stations,” primarily
because there was learning
involved. While visitors often cited
“enjoying the hands-on or interactive nature of the stations,” the most common
response “concerned enjoying information conveyed during the interaction”
(Garibay Group, 2013).
A big idea in a small package? That is exactly
what an exhibit cart is. Load it up and cruise the halls and galleries of your
museum until you find an audience. It’s a possibility worth imagining because
intentional design can work! It’s not only a fix--refocusing a message or
reengineering interactivity--it’s about setting out and intending to capture that
‘instant’ of initial human interest and managing that moment as it unfolds and
grows into a genuine experience.
Further, that experience can generate a memory of a great museum visit.
The
key to program carts’ success rests in remaining flexible making a commitment
to anticipate change through audience research,
and then adapting as needed to meet the visitor’s mind, senses and spirit. One
measure of success is reflected in the higher numbers of participation and
stay-time by visitors. Whether adults, families, or children in school groups,
all audiences are showing an increasing willingness to draw on their own sense
of wonder and curiosity as they investigate, analyze and interpret new museum
content designed with them in mind. Carts are succeeding because they invite
all visitors to participate equally in a process of direct exchange and
discovery. The result: carts are effective because they engage
people via the combination of live programmers and the common interactive space
of the cart. Carts aren’t just visitor-centered, they are people powered. In a
nutshell, carts WHEEL VISITORS IN.
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