Multipurpose Room

UX: National Air and Space Museum talk

Tour later today is at Suitland, Maryland, site. This is where there are no longer public tours of this facility.

Same principles apply that were talked about earlier this week: know your audience (may not know English very well), know your assets (we have the real planes), “focus on the user experience and the brand will take care of itself” (what is our brand worth?).

American By Air Exhibit at Smithsonian

50 to 100 people will have worked on the project – opens in Fall 2007 into 1500 sq. ft. We have no sequence – people can wonder where they want. [Note: asset of web is that designer controls links though not address or back button.] Will have AirBus and Boeing 747.

Who are the stakeholders of the exhibit? Visitors, Congressmen, Donors, peers of curator, museum director and others. Been fundraising for 10 years, usually three years. Curator did a book on the involvement of government to establish air transportation. Computer interactive in the exhibit. Break it down into eras (eg 1927–1941). Took series of headshots of pioneers and moved them into a kiosk – computer display.

Design Process

Creation: Script writing (curator, educators, editor), review (by entire team - establish standards), graphic panel layout (graphic designer), panel review (by entire team). We have to take every word and put it someplace. Need to find graphics when we have too many words. We make every effort to allow wheelchair but not all air

Testing and prototype: We test all exhibits, even very rough. Would bring in about 20 visitors and let them try it. Also larger crowds in the Museum. How do you measure success? We got half the people to read the labels! Failure: we expected people to learn three things before trying – so we broke it out into three steps.

Computer Interactive. Our interface is touchscreen because most others break easily. Other option is Mechanical Interactive. MI offers direct, immersive experience but they must be simple. You have to be willing to kill something.”Keep your focus on the big idea.”

In-house or by Contact. Must be content driven. Pro-bono has not always worked.

Questions

How do you research what audience wants? And age ranges? Lots of surveys: every 5th both coming and going to get demographic. Did surveys during project and ask about engines. But people don’t always know what they want to know. Monterey Bay Aquarium jellyfish exhibit – in the surveys no one wanted it until it was actually done. Need to explain

Favorite exhibits? Vicious Fishes – carpet with sting ray patterns. Aquarium where you can get underneath it. Totally immersive.

Do you have a business strategy? What is your target market? This is a big issue for the web site where we’ve just finished a survey. Most of current are WWII generation. How do we engage new generation? They are using the internet.

posted by Ray @ Thursday, August 17, 2006