Getting designers more audience-focussed

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Robert on June 4, 2008 at 4:14pm

I have to agree that this is an issue, but we also have to deal with conservation issues which seem to preclude any real internal discussion about this.

Permalink Reply by Christopher Edwards on August 18, 2008 at 3:11am

I think their are a number of questions here but the main one is: how do make designers feel supported by this process?

Designers can have fragile egos but we do like a challenge as well. And we are natural questioners, so when someone says the "text is too small to read" for instance, we have to wonder who and how many, because it will always be too small to someone. So where do you draw that line? Where do you say it's not enough to compromise at this point?

And so perhaps it then comes back to trust. There will always be critics. And there is always a tendency by non-designers to appease everyone. And get lost in the details without seeing the bigger picture. Who to believe?

For me, my experience in the museum has been opened by being part of a security team. The guards (when they can be the frontline of customer service), no one probably more than anyone how an exhibit is or is not working. And that level of interaction has informed my view point.

So perhaps then (and I'm totally rambling here, apologies) having designers be involved with audience research, interviewing guards, walking the floor at regular times, will help them to be more consumer focused (and a part of the process). If, however, the process is just getting a report from a marketing department (always suspect people anyway) with no understanding of the actual voices from the research -- then I think the designer might feel like its another panicked mandate from someone who "doesn't get it."

Does that make sense?

(Btw, sorry I've been absent. July was insane -- 2 weeks of intensive ASL classes and then preparing for a move to NYC. I'm still recovering and only 50% of my household has moved.)

Permalink Reply by Angelina Russo on August 18, 2008 at 12:35pm

I think the issue of designers and museums is a very important one, particularly as we move towards embedding user-generated content into physical sites. There are a number of fundamental problems:
- many museum separate their exhibition designers from their IT or interactive designers so inevitably you end up with differing approaches to communication;
- few museums have dedicated design teams who understand the audience from a museum rather than commercial point of view. This results in an aesthetic which works for design magazines and doesn't always work for museum spaces
- design education still (!!!) focuses on the object as final product so the museum environment isn't seen as a 'sexy' space to work in unless you can do away with all that busy stuff (object labels, seating, lighting etc).

And that is just the beginning. What do you think? Harsh?

Permalink Reply by Christopher Edwards on August 22, 2008 at 10:35am

A bit harsh. I mean people can yes take things too far, but design principals are almost universal (which the anthropologist in me cringes at that word). The ideas of white space and color balance and layout aren't just taught in design schools -- but actively researched by cognitive science. There's a terrific book -- the Universal Principals of Design -- which highlights many of these elements (and the underlying research to support them). I do detect that a bit of bias against designers — perhaps a belief that designers are just decorators who's education is not substantive, or that design (and thinking about design) is beneath the dignity (it's not a hard science or something) of someone educated. That designers themselves are to be service employees, not idea generators. I think think (as Michael says below) that designers DO need to be treated as an equal part of the team. And akin to the advocate of the consumer/museum goer. Perhaps we should call designers in a museum setting: interpretive visual specialists?

Permalink Reply by Michael Parry on August 19, 2008 at 5:55pm

While it's easy to throw this back at 'designers' - they should know better, or that they shouldn't be so focussed on aesthetics... I tend to think that there are multiple roles of responsibility here. The classic Field museum exhibition team model of designer + curator + audience advocate/educator still seems like the best way to avoid these problems, but that can only occur if all three roles have equal weight in decision making. I think the other process that feeds in here is having wide input across the org throughout the design process - not just having evaluation at the end and discovering the problems. While involving a cast of thousands will drive you and your designers crazy (and will slow you down...) it will mean you'll catch these issues earlier...

Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on August 27, 2008 at 8:00am

I knew this would be a can of worms! I do agree with you all and I do conclude that it is an organisational issue - how the whole exhibition development works, interacts and is supported. Getting the whole team involved in evaluation is also critical. I do this often with much success - there's nothing like people who are developing (or have developed) an exhibition getting feedback directly from those who they're doing it for.

We had a recent happy experience with some architects designing a major space for us who had never worked with a museum before. By taking them through the collections, behind the scenes, talking to curators, other staff and visitors there was a real sense of excitement and engagement by all and we ended up with a great visitor-focussed design. That's the trick I think: curators + interpreters/educators + design + audience advocate/evaluator = good outcome for the visitor and the institution?

Now another can of worms - if it's a simple formula why don't we follow it...

Permalink Reply by Christopher Edwards on September 11, 2008 at 1:41pm

Linda asks, "If it's a simple formula why don't we follow it?"

Since I've yet to actually work within a museum, but have spent enough time in design and office settings to know that this question is not limited to museums or exhibition design or even design in general.

The answer is too often the same: cultural inertia and lack of vision or leadership to turn that around born of the fact that very likely someone is benefiting in one form or another (control? hierarchy? job security?) from that inertia or lack of leadership. Maybe even ourselves.

I'd like to bring this topic back up a couple points here as I was thinking about this in terms of web and product development and some of the questions above about how do you get designers involved in the ownership of outcomes and audience development. It occurred to me that instead of dealing with the audience AFTER the fact -- what could happen is more prototyping and testing before hand?

This could be a particularly interesting way for designers to interact with an audience — perhaps a special perk for certain levels of members? — have exhibition testing events. Set up full scale mock-ups of text and images and have guests interact with the mock-ups. Really want to be open? Show them the model, talk to them about the concept brief. Have the design team there. Have stations manned by the different groups — a content developer station, a designer station, a curatorial station. And do both qualitative — watching, listening — research and quantitative survey-based — 10 reasons you liked this exhibit? evaluate the legibility of the text? — research.

Keep it simple and light, but allow that interaction between the audience and team right from the beginning. Bring ownership of the audience to the designers. And everyone else on the exhibition team, frankly.

Why only survey audiences at the end of the show?

Permalink Reply by Regan Forrest on August 18, 2009 at 11:48am

I think a lot of it comes down to money and how people divide the budget between the outcomes (i.e how much 'stuff' we can buy) and investment the development process itself. Unfortunately there are still too many decisionmakers who do not value the amount of time which can go into the planning and design process, and therefore they're not willing to pay for it. The model of curator + interpreter / educator + design + audience advocate is a good one, but in my experience it's one that means an institution needs to be prepared to spend in the region of 30-40% of their exhibition budget on planning rather than the exhibit hardware and content. That can seem like a lot of money wasted on talk and fees if you don't have any sense of the value it's providing.

Permalink Reply by Scott Guerin on February 7, 2009 at 12:31am

I agree with Christopher that protoyping is essential. Cardboard, hot glue, and duct tape are all that's usually needed.

But, while I relish interdisciplinary teams and interviewng everyone especially the janitors and guards, I remain slightly averse to the educator/evaluator's role. I fear "least common denominator" decisions and a reduction in risk taking.

Speaking of typography tho, I have a little idea I want to try: children have incredibly sharp vision and I've never understood why children's book type is so large. Anyway, I'm imagining of a block of interpretive text that starts that starts out large, say 48 points for "adults" but gets gets a lot smaller as the information becomes more oriented to young readers, maybe as small as 4 points.

Does anyone remember the miniature newspapers museums used to give out or sell? As a kid growing up in Milwaukee, the Public Museum used to publish a microscopic version of the local paper that was about 4"square when unfolded and we loved to read it.

Sorry for the digression

--S

Permalink Reply by Rob Hall on February 16, 2009 at 6:37am

One thought is to get designers to visit an institution with which they are not already familiar with a view to identifying what made the own experience less satisfying than it might have been. It may help if they take friends and or family who are not in the "exhibition industry" to see what bores, troubles, infuriates and otherwise distresses them. And what delights them, of course.