Designing America by Air
[Live Blogged Notes from UX Week 2006]
[Barbara Brennan, a designer for the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum]
The place we are going today is the facility that the Air and Space Museum uses to restore planes and make production models and presentation materials.
American by Air is the newest exhibit she is working on. The team has between fifty and a hundred people.
Start with curatorial content.
The exhibit tells the story of US air transportation from the beginning in four major sections:
- How the government shaped the industry and the technology of flight
- How the air travel experience has changed
- The social and cultural impact of air travel
These things are funded by donors, not the federal government. This means that content is in part defined by corporate donors. They won't compromise quality but will look for stories that relate to donors. Similarly they change content under pressure from Congress.
Funders for this one:
- Boeing
- Airbus
- NASA (surprising since the President just rewrote their mission to eliminate research on earth...)
So let's walk through this exhibit.
Start with the beginning of flight. Instead of telling that the government did this or that, they pull out individuals and make things like an interactive piece where you assume the role of an early airmail pilot.
They go through each time period and try to pull out stories about customer experience and then try to present this information. This is what people care about. (Do they do research to determine that this is actually what people want?)
They have full-size figures to stand next to. They have walk-through airplanes. The early period was a time when airlines competed on service quality, unlike today.
Because production takes a year, they are trying to come up with ways to integrate "current" information that couldn't be known when exhibit copy and content is sent to production. They are working on an "in the news" section to pull current headlines.
Each graphic panel in the exhibit has to tell a story. They use graphic symbols to identify content structure and to present big ideas.
(She keeps denigrating information that includes discussion of systems like the government and industry. It seems surprising, and a little condescending, to assume that the audience will "fall asleep" upon readin this real information. Is there research to back up her assertions?)
She again reminds us that the corporate donors and the director of the Smithsonian gets to veto things. (What happened to this great American institution of independent research? Oh the travails of living under an anti-science/ anti-government Congress and President...)
Before building the actual exhibits they construct 3D models, both physical and digital 3D. For planes that are too small for wheelchairs so they build QTVR interactions for cockpits. They also make these available online.
They test the mechanical and interactive portions. They also test how often people read labels, a fifty-percent reading rate is considered high. They test each piece with real visitors to the museum.
To test computer interactions they start with paper prototypes and then build powerpoint.
So how do they decide what is mechanical and what is computer-interactive. If the mechanical gets too complicated they often switch to digital. The goal is to get as many things physical as possible. You can't get so married to the direction you are going that you can't kill it and change gears.
In-house or contract:
- All products must be content driven
- Cost is a huge factor, this project is $300,000 in the hole
- Pro-bono arrangments haven't worked in the past
- NASM builds in-house capabiities but lacks many skills, like object modeling and animation
- Must determine creative ways to partner with industry to create cutting edge products that support content
Q: How did you get into this?
A: All strange paths. Theater design, lighting, graphic design, art history, architecture, etc. People come from everywhere.
Q: How do you determine what your audience wants? And how do you deal with a broad age range?
A: They survey people who are walking through the building and find demographic data that way. With content they have to balance and intpret information for the audience. They surveyed people and found that they weren't interested in engines. But the curator and academics see that as important so they come up with a way to contextualize this more complicated information. A similiar thing happened at the Monterey Bay Aquarium where they found that people didn't care about jellyfish but still wanted to do an exhibit about it and it was a hit.
Q: What are your favorite immersive exhibits?
A: Viscious Fishes at the Smithsonian about predatory fish. Highly immersive.
Q: Have you developed a business strategy? Have you thought about target market to attract new visitors? Etc.
A: (answer from NASM web person) This is a big issue for the web site particularly. Just finished an evaluation of the site. They've been on this "Y" generation kick lately. What comes out of surveys is that the demographic is still really broad and their primary demographic is still from 35 to 55. They need more people to go out to the center in Dulles and basically are paying to keep it open. They are looking at ways to change their image in some ways.
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Who is this guy?
I actually believe in designing things by Chinatown bus:
1. Try to find ticket office.
2. Try to break through languange barrier to get ticket.
3. Board bus.
4. Bus breaks down on New Jersey Turnpike.
5. Passengers start playing mahjong to pass time.
6. Bus fixed slightly before midnight.
7. Get into NYC.
Hmmm.... not exactly the best business plan or workflow, is it?