Lessons Learned Part III

Lessons about…finished products

8. Many problems don’t surface until after installation
This is a very common occurrence in the exhibit design field and I would say that the majority of it is because you can never know how an audience will experience your finished product. You can have the best laid plans in the world, but if a key area is too dark or a kiosk is awkwardly placed and visitors are discouraged from looking at something as a result, then your exhibit is affected. The average attention span of a museum visitor is 15 minutes or less per gallery so you don’t want anything to deter, detract, or confuse the visitor or you risk them leaving the gallery and not seeing anything.

Of course, experience in the field and familiarity of what has worked in the past and what hasn’t will go a long way and designers learn how to tackle some would be design issues before the fabrication phase. But something is always bound to come up that you did not expect.

For example, shortly after I started at NASM, a revamp of the Mars corner in a gallery was installed. The new section had updated graphic panels, amazing images, nifty videos and a few artifacts. During the first week of installation, Ashley and I took half an hour to go down to the gallery and just sit and watch to see how people reacted and what they did. Some of the things we witnessed were so surprising! Which leads me to lesson #9…

9. Always spend time in your gallery space
This is important both at the beginning of any newly opened space and periodically throughout the life of the exhibit.

In the case of the Mars corner, we saw kids leaping down a safety ramp, hanging on artifact cases mounted on a wall, punching every monitor they came to as if it was a touch screen, even if it clearly wasn’t, and completely bypassing an area with a really cool video. It was obvious that there were some changes that needed to be made to make the area safer for visitors, provide clearer instructions, and to protect the exhibit artifacts. Unfortunately this process usually involves extra work by fabrication staff, which costs more money, but is often a necessity.

As a safeguard against these changes, every exhibit budget should have a built in 10% contingency amount, because inevitably, things will come up that you haven’t expected.