Engaging the brain in science exhibits

(Reposted from January 18, 2012)

Our brain demands we follow certain rules and processes, developed over evolutionary time, to make sense of information and keep us from being eaten by lions or wolves.

Researchers tell us that the brain essentially processes and files new knowledge in three steps: focus, comparison, and building relationships. Museums report that on average, a visitor spends 46 seconds at an interactive exhibit before moving on. If so, in the first few engaging seconds, any exhibit we create should force focus and then hit the other two steps in order.

According to a panel of experts smarter than me, one way is to start by asking the visitor a question. What do you want to know? How can we find out? What does it remind you of? At the root of each answer is a need to make sense of a problem or issue. Asking them, then, to compare the issue to something familiar forces the visitor to focus, but also recall information they already know, define parameters, and concentrate on two or more things at once.  To make sense of these comparisons, the brain is forced to establish relationships, which leads to developing concepts.  If “red” and “”yellow” are comparisons, “color” is the concept that develops. Concepts are not in this world (empirical). They are in our heads and are what differentiate us from that lion.

So, what are some practical tactics and applications of these ideas in exhibits? According to those same panel of experts:

— When we’re creating an exhibit, it’s not about cramming in the highest possible learning per square foot. People need “white space” as much in an exhibit as they do on the written or virtual page. That space gives people time to process.

— Slow people down; increase their linger time
— Provide a low buy-in threshold (low-hanging rewards), but let the visitor take the activity as high as it can go for them
— Honor existing social interactions between people (parents, co-workers, chaperones, docents, etc) who can help discuss comparisons and relationships. Also, allow for peripheral or group observation. Interaction with other people is key. There’s proof to the axiom that “all learning is social.”
— Create a collaborative, not competitive, environment
— Create experiences worth having and remembering: Stretch them and challenge them to learn something new.

— Learning is not terminal: we don’t stop learning at any time in our conscious lives. Think across generations!

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Virtual events

(Reposted from June 28, 2011)

This month, Exhibitor Magazine posted the results of a readership survey on the use of virtual events. Trade show exhibits are the industry communication tool of choice for serious marketing strategists, who have been watching with increasing interest to see if virtual events will change how businesses find new customers and close deals. The results: “face-to-face marketing is safe and sound – at least for the time being.”

The perception among responders was that virtual events are less effective than traditional marketing efforts like staffed exhibits. For the 40 percent of respondents who led or participated in virtual events, only 28 percent said the effort “met” or “exceeded” their expectations. Of the 40 percent, more than 2/3 said they missed the “energy of a live event.” While more than half said virtual exhibits helped them with brand awareness, sixty percent reported that virtual event costs were more or equal to face-to-face exhibits. Only 10 percent said virtual events attracted customers they would not normally have reached.

For now anyway, face-to-face conversations and interpersonal communications still seems to be the way to move the meter from “simply interested” to “interested enough to act.”

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“If a tree falls in the forest…”

(Reposted from August 13, 2011)

There’s an interesting discussion brewing in NASA’s HQ and around its centers concerning the concept of “indefinite loans” by NASA of aircraft and artifacts for public display.

On the one hand, Logistics Management cites NASA aircraft policy, Federal Property management regulations and NASA regulation 4300.1. They point out that items are supposed to be disposed of when no longer needed operationally. Also, if an item on the books is on indefinite or long-term loan, NASA must not have an operational need for it.

On the other side of the aisle is Public Outreach and center exhibits managers, who cite the Space Act of 1958 and NASA regulation 1387.1. NASA communicators point out the legitimacy of informing the public as one of NASA’s four charted missions. Their position is that long-term and even indefinite loans support their mission and therefore these loaned items still serve an operational purpose.

Although it is truly a tempest in a teapot when we’re wrestling with so many larger issues these days, it does come down to a basic, age-old question: “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it actually fall?”

In other words, if a space mission happened and no one heard about it or learned from it, by how much is the feat diminished? If the answer is “lots,” one could argue that education and public outreach and NASA’s public affairs and communication functions are key NASA operations in their own right and the tools they use (such as static aircraft and artifact loans) have legitimate operational uses, too.

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Gaming as Learning

For about 18 months now, I’ve been wrestling with the concept of virtual exhibits, especially how to make them more of an online interactive experience and less of a web page of information. In austere times, virtual exhibits could be cheaper to maintain and reach more people. If you search the Web, you’ll find a nearly infinite number of topical web pages posted by museums or on http://www.nasa.gov, but no one would ever rank these sites as fun or as engaging as their physical counterpart in a museum or NASA visitor center.

At the Association of Science-Technology Centers annual conference last week, a panel of video game experts during the closing session pointed out that “‘virtual’ is the real world in our heads.” They provided attendees with some insights into how designers lure gamers into a world that suspends disbelief.

  • Some of the strengths of gaming for learning are that “game time” augments traditional learning hours and offers non-threatening, iterative (repetitive) learning.
  • Some of the weaknesses of gaming for learning, according to the panelists, lie in times when the gamer leaves the activity before the objective or when the “learner” explores an unintended avenue and potentially creates a long-standing misconception (negative learning).

For anyone thinking about creating a virtual exhibit, here are four elements of successful video game design that might apply to a successful on-line exhibit.

  • Hard fun: visitors should have to work towards a goal, but it’s important to strike a balance between being challenging and frustrating
  • Easy fun: the subject content should offer novelty and be comfortable to explore
  • People fun: there should be a social aspect to the activity
  • Serious fun: the experience should create meaning for the visitor

The common element, of course, is fun.

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The Legible City

The Legible City is the developing concept of hard and soft infrastructure in a community that marries emerging technologies with the explosion of newly available data. The amount of data humans are generating is growing 50% each year and that opens up an ever-increasing number of possible applications for it.

The idea kinda started with an interactive exhibit designed by Jeffery Shaw, in 1988. Essentially, Shaw created a cycle spinning program that could take you through a conceptual version of Amsterdam, Karisruhe and Manhattan. In the former, a visitor could bicycle through streets lined with buildings represented by huge text blocks. In the Manhattan version, you could choose one of eight or so routes, or story lines. Location data on the handlebars, enhanced with real monologues by Koch, Trump, taxi drivers and other New York icons, helped convey content.

Part of the concept of a Legible City is the inclusion of large-scale (public viewed) projects to convey data using new technologies to reach the masses. Unlike giant billboards, publicity pieces or Cristo-type art, such items function to convey useful data that adds to people’s lives. This has interesting implications for NASA exhibits and begs the question “Could the street become the new trade show floor or museum gallery?”

Some examples that come to mind: sculptures that convey current global ocean or Arctic temperatures; office buildings flashing massive walls of live Earth images from the ISS or the Curiosity rover; or large count-up clocks that report the current distances from Earth of the Voyager (or Orion!) spacecrafts.

Google “Legible City” to find more about Shaw’s exhibit or check out links to “Bristol Legible City” for more about the concept itself.

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The Intersection of Art and Science

Strange coming from a guy with an art degree who works in a STEM mecca like a science center, but I’ve discovered that I am not a fan of either science or art. At least not in their most basic forms. I’ve known zealots in both fields (siblings and relatives, actually), and at their extremes neither camp seems to show much tolerance for the other. What does excite me, though, is the impact, consequences, and applications that science and art leave behind – especially when both are used together.

The concept of “STEM” was established as an umbrella effort to entice young minds to take up technical careers. But since the student pool is a finite number, for every person who chooses a STEM job, obviously one less goes into a liberal arts career. On the surface, this seems to throw down the gauntlet for competition.

As I see it, though, there are several ways to combine the arts and sciences so that the two career paths coexist without competing. One can be used to help explain the other; each can complement the other, or the two can be combined so that each is more than the sum of both.

To me, the ideal is not to complement but to find true integration. Once you get past the cultural biases in each field, it shouldn’t be that hard to do. Both art and science explore failure, redesign and then do-over. To advance, both rely on revolutionary and evolutionary thinking. Both require intense gray matter time followed by considerable physical labor and field-testing. And since art and science are processes, you can be a scientist, engineer or artist anytime, anywhere.

That said, it seems to me both science and art could be practiced simultaneously with little or no extra effort but producing interesting synergies.

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