Enriching Exhibit Prototyping

Enriching Exhibit Prototyping
Jenni Martin / Sara DeAngelis
San Jose – Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose
Friday, 4pm – 5:30pm

The final program of the day Renee and I tag teamed. Seemed like it would be right up our alley – exhibit prototyping. The presenters were the San Jose children’s museum who are apparently well respected for the research they put into developing their exhibits. The session was a case study so it was very specific to San Jose’s project – which there were some good tips buried in there. It would have been nicer to have a panel where each compared there process. The other thing that I wasn’t huge fan of was the “stand up survey.” A series of questions were asked to gage the audience. Stand up if … “you have a hand in exhibit design, if you’re an educator, if you handle rentals, if you’ve worked in the field more than 2 years, 10 years.” I’m not sure what the unofficial “data” was being used for, perhaps future rentals of the exhibit?

The entire session was dedicated to prototyping of the mammoth exhibit that several of us saw on the No. CA. trip – Renee, Margaret, Barb, Adam, and I. This whole exhibit is based off of the local discovery of a young Colombian mammoth's bones. They named her Lupe. The museum has partnered with several people in order to research what activities will provide the guest experience and conversations they want to happen.

The exhibit definitely has more of a “science exhibit” feeling for me. Visitor’s can come in and see part of the mammoth’s skull in a case. The idea is for visitor’s to se in what position the skull is found. There is a small skull they can rotate to figure out the head position. Another part of the exhibit has visitors interacting with a femur bone found. Children can sit in a chair to measure the length of their femur. Another part has children choosing a foam bone femur to place on the wall and measure, while a shadow shape of the animal to which it is supposed to belong will appear. Yet another part of the exhibit has a dig (cocoa bean shells and corn husks I think) where attached fake fossils are bolted down and visitors can “unearth the bone”. There is also a small “diorama table” where there are small toy animals for the children to play with. The final piece is a light tracing table with a mammoth fossil that children can trace with colored pencils.

A good portion of the session was spent to describing these segments of the exhibits and the variations they tried to make this experience happen. We also got to meet several members from the panel who each had an important part in developing the exhibit. UC Santa Cruz & Berkley had students conducting observation, research, and evaluation on the testing. The water district that actually unearthed the fossils was a partner.

The interesting part was the research evaluation that the students conducted, which felt glossed over. The students evaluated only on one weekend day, which was typically when this prototype exhibit was open. Of course releases were filled out, children wore labels on their back identifying whether there was photography permission or not. The students recorded observations, conversations, and photographed families. There were a few slides (which should be in the powerpoint we’ll have access to in about week) that showed the grid of simple observations the students were making. The sample questions / observations: yes/no touched mammoth bone, played at the dig pit for more than 2 minutes, picked up the clipboard, mentioned dinosaurs, and then there was an area where anecdotes were recorded. We were only shown these few slides with the data results showing how the changes in their prototype had been successful based off of the data gathered by the students.

Some of the change in the prototype seemd like common sense – and a study wasn’t necessary – just knowledge of kids. Do you think the kids would like to play with the dig with or without a screen covering the top of it? Hmmmm. Without the cover. Of course, the data showed this. I believe they got a National Science Foundation Grant (I’ll have to double check my notes – now packed in my suitcase). I wonder if they had to be more scientific / more data because of the grant? I’m not sure because one of the partners mentioned at the beginning of the workshop how respected CDMSJ exhibits were because of all the research in the process. I think they mentioned that they have already been working on this project for several years and it will probably be another 2 or 3 before the exhibit makes it out? Looooong time!

Pretty good session. Most valuable thing was the evaluation info. Also the need for release forms and open they were with the public about the evaluation. Good tip was to have the evaluation station next to the front door (their rate jumped to 90% when they moved their location).