A practical approach to exhibition design
A practical approach to exhibition design
The VisitorEngagement project has developed a practical approach to design engaging exhibits in science centres and museums. The approach includes the museum practitioner, the designer, and the visitor into the design process. We use the engagement profile as a tool to present the qualities of installations visually for the stakeholders. Visitors are included in the process by giving their opinion on a standardised questionnaire that consists of eight questions regarding the engagement profile and up to four questions about satisfaction; twelve questions in total, set aside demographics and such. The design process is designed to be comprehensible for practitioners, and the project is about to develop tools to support this process by using apps.
The details of the design process are described in the following publication: Leister, Wolfgang; Tjøstheim, Ingvar; Joryd, Göran; de Brisis, Michel; Lauritzsen, Syver; Reisæter, Sigrun. 2017. "An Evaluation-Driven Design Process for Exhibitions." Multimodal Technologies Interact. 1, no. 4: 25. (doi: 10.3390/mti1040025)
The chart shown in the additional material of this project update shows the definitions in the engagement profile as a graphical chart. How does this work? When evaluating an exhibit, set a cross to the value that fits the most for each of the eight dimensions. Consider which dimensions you want to increase or decrease (or ask your visitors). Then, discuss with designers how to implement such changes. The goal of this process will be more engaging exhibits.
This approach has been developed by researchers from Norsk Regnesentral (Norwegian Computing Centre), the interaction designers from Expology, and the museum practitioners from Engineerium, the Norwegian Maritime Museum, and the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology.