Interactive Use Drawing Strategy
My work on interactive exhibit "use drawings" began at Technorama, Switzerland, where I spent a working sabbatical in 2001. I was invited to design an exhibit label system for multi-lingual visitors (5 languages). A visual strategy allows visitors to get started quickly and interact easily with less reading. It cuts down on the number of instructional words needed and helps shifts the tone of voice from technical to invitational. Addressing the multi-lingual issue naturally helps early or non readers as well. It was a pleasure to photograph actual visitors on the floor and to represent their diversity in my drawings. In six months, I designed and illustrated 150 exhibit labels.
At the Exploratorium I developed interactive label strategies in collaboration with exhibit developers, artists, visitors, writers, evaluators and curators. In preparation for the museum’s move to Pier 15 in 2013, I helped define new museum standards for functionality, consistency, and flexibility of exhibit labels across the changing museum floor. This included a system of use drawings and the creation of the EXPLO font with typographer Erik Spiekermann. Aspects of my exhibit label work are highlighted in Beverly Serrell's Exhibit Labels, An Interpretive Approach, 2015, and the EDGE Study, 2016, focused on design for girls.
Visitor Research
It was challenging and informative to be involved in formal and informal visitor research at the Exploratorium. As a thinking partner in the A.P.E. project (Active Prolonged Engagement) I helped investigate ways to increase the time spent by visitors in open-ended exploration at our interactive exhibits. After defining specific types of interactive and engagement behavior, I modified exhibit labels, analyzed video of solitary and social visitor behavior, and designed the original research publication.
Interactive Prototyping
Iterative and rapid prototyping is essential to interactive exhibit development. When the Queens Library of NYC partnered with the Exploratorium to create exhibits for their new children's wing, constraints included limited space, need for quiet, and no loose exhibit parts! Content was constrained by educational curriculum. We weren't able to prototype our exhibits on site in NYC, so we built a rolling rapid-prototyping station to use with our own visitors before testing again in a local San Francisco library.
Projects include:
Technorama, Switzerland
Going A.P.E.
Queens Library
Science of Sharing
Being Human
On-going Artists-in-Residence installations
Tinkering Studio Maker's exhibits
On-going exhibit refurb projects
Listen
Matter World