Findings from the MIT Museum
Rebecca and Lamees
Areas of Interest:
- What do people not enjoy about their museum experiences?
- Some people feel that there may not be enough guidance/descriptions and find their museum experience to be haphazard and disorganized
- Others feel that there is too much information/guidance and find their museum experience too restricting
- How do we strike a balance between these two ends of the spectrum?
- Is there a way to simultaneously cater to visitors who would like less information/guidance and those who would prefer more?
Findings
- The digital interface invited visitors to interact
- The “Surprise Me” feature was interesting - it allows the visitor to approach learning about an object in a way that isn’t overwhelming
- The digital labeling had a way of browsing objects by filtering with purpose and location, offering another way of interacting with further information
- Having the object and labels separate gives the visitor the choice whether to view objects or learn about them first. This helps to cater to both audiences who prefer having more information/engagement, as well as those who may be interested in a more passive viewing experience.
- One problem with this setup is that the visitor has to memorize the number, or ideally numbers, of the objects they are interested in in order to learn more about them
- There may be less fluid movement as the viewer may have to jump from looking at an object, finding it on the digital interface, then going back to another object, etc. This back-and-forth may create a sense of disruption. Having the information next to the objects may feel more seamless as viewers travel through the space.
- The way the objects were arranged on the screen by number in rows and columns was not intuitive at times- it was occasionally hard to find the object we were looking for
- In sections like the AI section, the labels had a lot of uniformity in terms of style, which unified the spread out exhibit
- In sections such as the one with the digital labels, uniformity was established in other ways - such as how the objects were displayed on just one wall and all in acrylic boxes
- QR codes for more information were present in some sections