Exhibit Critique

All Eyes on Me

 

This exhibit caught my eye as we were entering the museum, but upon interacting with it more closely, I found that it didn't work well for me. All Eyes on Me works as follows: a stool is placed in front of what appears to be a vanity cabinet, with an array of circular mirrors behind it. An explanation of the exhibit is attached to the center of the cabinet. Upon sitting down, each mirror in the array is supposed to reflect your eye back at you.

Usability. At first glance, the mirror reflected my chin, so I had to slouch quite a bit to get the exhibit's effect to work. This involved reading the guiding text a couple of times and adjusting the distance at which I was seated. Because I was intently focusing on figuring out this particular exhibit, I was willing to put in the time, but this took more than the two minutes an average visitor would spend on any one exhibit. Additionally, since I wasn't sure where to focus my eyes, I found myself getting a bit dizzy over time. 

Placement. The exhibit seemed oddly placed to me. The exhibit is designed to be used by one person at a time, whereas the neighboring exhibits are all more socially oriented. As a result, there did not seem to be many people interacting with it, especially in comparison to how much attention the nearby exhibits were receiving. For example, many of the other exhibits in this area involved fast-moving parts (e.g. the slinky conveyor belt, the bike wheel gyroscope) which were particularly enticing to the children in the museum.

Social interaction. I hung around the exhibit for a bit and noticed something about its use that I found intriguing. Throughout the day, I frequently saw people watching other visitors interact with exhibits from nearby. In particular, children would observe adults (and other children) using a particular exhibit, then use the exhibit themselves once they could manage to get a turn. This kind of interaction did not really happen with All Eyes on Me. I would guess that this lack of interaction about the exhibit is a result of the way in which visitors are forced to interact with it. In the first place, the exhibit faces people toward the wall and away from others nearby. Because the exhibit uses mirrors for its effect, it depends on the angle of view, meaning observers cannot see what the person sitting in the stool is seeing. These different perspectives make it difficult for the observer to tell what the user is seeing, much less whether the exhibit is an enjoyable experience.

Improvement ideas. Placing the exhibit in a different location would solve a lot of its issues.
I think it might make more sense to place the exhibit in one of the quieter corridors, because those areas see less heavy traffic and are therefore more suited for individual exploration. Arranging the exhibit so that visitors could stand further away and experience the effect could also be helpful, particularly for those who have trouble using the exhibit as a result of its fixed height.This could also help make the exhibit a bit less antisocial, because other viewers would be able to see some of what their peers are seeing in the exhibit. 

Your Father's Nose

This exhibit was one of my favorites! Since I'm enamored with exhibits that force people to interact with each other in unusual ways, the unexpected and collaborative moves that museum visitors made when interacting with this exhibit were of particular interest.

Sharing. As the picture shows, this exhibit appears to be designed specifically with sharing in mind. It takes exactly two people to make the phenomenon work; in other words, using this exhibit socially is mandatory. To illustrate what sharing looks like in the context of this exhibit, I observed a small family interacting around it. There were three people: two adults, who I assumed to be the mother and father of a third person, a young boy (maybe 10-12 years old). At first, the mother and son sat at the exhibit, observing their spliced faces with amusement. Then, the father and mother switched places, so that the son could see what his face looked like spliced with both of his parents. Finally, the two parents spent a moment blending their faces together. Intriguingly, this meant that the family spent substantially more than two minutes on the exhibit. Their behavior also suggests that they were highly engaged with the phenomenon, and that the parents were not simply pretending to be interested in the exhibit for the sake of their son-- that they blended their faces independently of their son suggests exactly the opposite.

Explanation. The in-depth explanation of the phenomenon under examination in this exhibit was placed off to the side of the display, rather than directly on the exhibit itself. I found this decision exceptionally interesting, because it freed up the exhibit for other users while simultaneously enabling visitors to read about the science behind it all. For example, the family described above was still reading the explanation and standing off to the side as I started to use the exhibit. Providing visitors with the opportunity to learn about the physical phenomena at play in an exhibit without obstructing it for others seems like a generally good move.

Device Ecologies

I figured I'd also comment briefly on a theme I picked up on over the course of the day. I'm interested in the fact that a growing number of people have a camera on them at all times. After Friday's class, I'm convinced that the existence of these 'device ecologies' means we can begin to leverage the presence of that technology in designing exhibits. As we discussed briefly in class, it's really interesting that the colors in these spectra apparently change in pictures; yellow and green become more prominent, and orange and blue become comparatively less bright. I found a similar phenomenon when I used my phone to take a picture of Sketch Mirror. That exhibit uses an edge detection algorithm to dynamically 'sketch' whatever is in view of its camera and display it, as if it were a stylized mirror. When I took a picture of myself in the display, the image somehow became much sharper and more distinguishably me. These examples demonstrate how the presence of these technological tools that we carry around on a daily basis can unexpectedly impact how we learn in less formal settings, like museums. I'd be very interested in designing an exhibit that deliberately uses people's devices as a tool for exploration and learning, but without the need for a dedicated app. As these two examples demonstrate, a basic phone camera can already change the ways in which we perceive the world.