ON LESSONS LEARNED

Yesterday our class presented our year long exhibit on William Harvey’s discovery of the circulatory system. After 2 hours of visitors, I learned a few lessons about visitors to museum exhibits. For one, they are reluctant to ‘dive in’ and attempt interactivity. Usually, they hang back and analyze the exhibit to try and deduce what must be accomplished, and step forward once they have been invited to interact. Visitors are, however, eager to engage in the exhibit once they understand how it works. This is one of the problems with current museums featuring fully interactive exhibits – the explanation is usually in text form, while visitors much prefer to engage with a person who can use verbal communication to describe, in many ways, how the exhibit works, and what it attempts to teach the visitor.

Another interesting observation I made was the behaviour of visitors upon entering the exhibit. Many museum researchers have concluded that visitors like moving to their right upon entering a room. In my experience yesterday, visitors moved to whichever side of the room that had the most space. We enjoy our personal space, and it is apparent that museum visitors avoid high traffic areas on purpose.

The order of presentation also appears important to visitors. At the start, I explained Harvey’s mechanical philosophy, then proceeded to discuss how the exhibit functioned. Frequently I noticed the visitor level of interest begin to wane; they just wanted to touch the buttons! Ultimately I made the appropriate adjustment, detailing how the exhibit worked first, and then informing them of Harvey’s philosophy and its relation to the exhibit.