"Learning is voluntary and self-directed in museums. It's driven by curiosity, discovery, free exploration and the sharing of experiences with companions. There are no grades, no control and there is no reason for visitors to pay attention except for its own sake. And most often, these experiences are without the benefit of teachers or other knowledgeable persons to interpret what visitors are seeing or doing."
I was watching what visitors do during visits, how they move through spaces, how much time they spend reading, viewing displays and even which exhibition halls they choose. Most often, people also tend to go to those areas where there is a big crowd of people who seem to be enjoying themselves. They are led by others' reactions and experiences.
The popular ones use hands-on gadgets which basically manipulate the brain, motivating it to simply operate these gadgets. Mindless button pressing, sensory stimulation from lights, sounds are enough to sustain attention, whether or not appropriate attention is given to the exhibition content.
In the Jurassic Park hall of the Museum of Natural History, there were mechanical toys that the user steered to face the skeleton of the dinosaur it wanted to know about. The toy had a video screen which recognised the dinosaur, and began animating it. To the skeleton, it added flesh, and finally a realistic 3d rendering of what the dinosaur would have looked like. It was placed in its natural habitat, and you could hear it making noises or eating another animal or coming close to the screen to scare you! Another tool I saw being used was the Magnifying glass which was almost a way of highlighting an object. It told the person that this object is important enough to be look at through a zoomed lens.
Some exhibtion formats, like interactive games, quizzes, animations, soundscapes, definitely work better than others. The subtle use of advanced technology can also be enticing. At the Museum for Telecommunication, they had displayed a number of postage stamps, letters, and objects used for communication in the old days. Each object was displayed inside a pillar. The room was full of these pillars, and when you approached a particular pillar, the display inside a glass case would light up and a recorded machine would switch on, as if just for your sake. The simple use of sensors could definitely sustain my attention.
This kiosk below had movies on journeys through space and time, audios of the sounds of planets, you could scroll through a graphic with information, and there were other interactive videos.
The visual, sensory, emotional, action and social aspects of objects often are more interesting to many visitors than the text.
This can be overcome by designing the text so it adds to the sensory, action and social rewards available from the exhibitions. Many visitors will read text that is approachable, suggests things to do, adds to a mystery, leads to the unexpected, enables a prediction and so on.
What always works is making connections with today's world. I had a audio guide when I was at the Museum for telecommunication(as everything was written in German) and I wasn't paying attention when I suddenly heard the word 'today'. And I quickly re-winded to hear what was being said. An interesting comparison between the interfaces of earlier phones and today was being made which was interesting.
:D
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