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beginning, middle, and ending. For example, the exhibit
on networks that I studied begins with a two-part opening:
a video overview, followed by a room where visitors received
an “identity card.” Visitors use the card to choose
one of four virtual tour guides to lead them through the
exhibit (seen by visitors on interactive display terminals);
the computer records the choice on the identity card, and
so visitors see related material at each guide station in the
exhibit. The middle of the exhibit is a sequence of galleries,
each of which describes a different type of network. The
exhibit ends with another two-part sequence: a gallery
presenting the negative side of networks, followed by a
room where users can connect to the Internet.
Within the exhibit, exhibit designers use common storytelling
techniques such as immersion, juxtaposition, repetition,
and subliminal messages to engage the visitor. In
addition to serving as a guiding principle of content development
described earlier, immersion also serves as a storytelling
technique, much like establishing shots in film and
description in novels. It physically places visitors in the
environment of the objects.
For example, the Scandinavian Heritage Museum in
Seattle tells the story of immigration from Scandinavia to
the U.S. by literally guiding visitors through a sequence of
scenes depicting the journey. Visitors see such scenes as
rural poverty in the Old Country, a crowded ship carrying
immigrants, and homes in the New Country. The Minneapolis
Institute of Arts recreates period rooms from Charleston,
Paris, and London to depict furniture styles of the past.
Exhibit designers believe that experiencing a subject
through immersion is so essential to the success of an
exhibit that they include it in grant proposals to persuade
funders to support the exhibit.
Even a seemingly minor detail contributes to the authenticity
of the immersion environment. For example, the
walls in each gallery of “Without boundaries” were painted
specific colors to enhance the authenticity. Green walls in
the first gallery provide a pastoral feeling, typical of a
newly settled rural area, while gray walls in the gallery
depicting the commercial growth of the city evoke a business-
like mood. Sometimes the building itself creates authenticity.
The industrial history museum that I studied is
housed in a former canning factory. In addition to adding
authenticity, this history actually inspired the subject of the
exhibition.
Another storytelling technique is juxtaposition, in
which two opposing images or concepts are positioned
near one another so visitors can make the contrast. The
designers of the exhibit on the history of the city in my
study juxtaposed the clothing of early European settlers
with that of Native Americans, so viewers would sense the
culture clash that would define the early history of the
region. Later in the exhibit, the designers recreated a street
with scenes from white culture on one side and scenes
from African-American culture on the other, to show their
separate histories in the community. An activity that takes
place within the exhibit on the canning factory juxtaposes
managers and workers in the same work environment.
With repetition, an image or concept appears more
than once in an exhibit to reinforce a point. Exhibit design
teams purposely repeat points to increase the likelihood
that visitors will remember them. For example, clothing
typical of an era was included in each gallery of the exhibit
on the history of the city to emphasize its importance as a
cultural statement in each period of the city’s development.
Exhibit designers also include subliminal messages,
messages they hope make an unconscious impact on visitors.
Three stones in the first gallery of the exhibit on the
history of the city in the urban history museum each represented
a different phase in the early growth of the city.
Designers did not expect most visitors to recognize the
significance of these stones. In fact, designers at each
museum I studied did not expect visitors to understand
their subliminal messages, but the idea generator at the
urban history museum said that some visitors tell her that
they do get these messages.
In addition to a tightly crafted plot, a good story must
be populated by engaging characters. Exhibit designers
address this issue, too, in their exhibits. Each of the three
exhibitions I studied included key characters. In two of the
museums studied, the characters were fictional but
emerged from extensive research and were composites of
real people. For example, the virtual guides through the
exhibit on networks were intended to represent different
segments of the local population. One was a homeless
person. Research with the homeless population helped
exhibit designers flesh out this character. Similarly, the
designers of the exhibit on the canning factory included
descriptions of workers and managers. Although the names
were fictional, their life stories were based on information
in the museum archives.
As stories are about people, so they must appeal to
people. Therefore, the gauge for assessing planned storytelling
techniques is their anticipated appeal to visitors.
“The link between the museum and the visitor’s life
needs to be made clear . . . the objects one finds and the
experiences one enjoys, while possibly inspiring awe and a
sense of discovery, should not feel disconnected from the
visitor’s experience” (Csikzentmihalyi and Hermanson
1995, p. 37).
At the most basic, museum exhibit design teams try to
appeal to everyday and today. For example, a living room
in the exhibit on networks showed how networks affect
modern home life. The last activity in the exhibit on the
canning factory gives visitors an opportunity to relate work
of the late 19th century to work today.
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Although exhibit designers make liberal use of storytelling
techniques, they sometimes have difficulty finding
the human story in the otherwise academic topic of a
proposed exhibit. “What’s your story? [Sometimes, it’s] really
hard to get it out to visitors,” commented an exhibit
designer attending a meeting of her colleagues at the 2000
American Association of Museums Annual Meeting.
In contrast, another designer commented that she is
“more interested in the voices and stories than the technical
aspects of the exhibit.” She admitted that the technical
aspects are essential in the practical challenge of bringing
the story to the public.
Lessons for Web design
As exhibit designers rely on storytelling techniques to engage
visitors in the content of exhibits, so some Web site
designers are relying on storytelling techniques both to
engage visitors and to use as a planning tool.
Here are some of the ways that Web site designers use
storytelling techniques as a planning tool.
r Describe the background story. One common writing
technique in storytelling is sketching out a character’s
backstory: the experiences that preceded
those told in the piece being written. Web site designers
use a similar technique called scenarios or
use cases (Nurminen and Karppinen 2000). A scenario
describes the real world situation (or backstory)
that drove a user to consult a particular Web
site.
r Describing users as real people rather than demographics.
Author Alan Cooper (1999) recommends
that Web site designers also prepare descriptions of
archetypes—that is, provide character descriptions of
typical users. As the many characters of a good story
often represent a diversity of experience or perspectives,
so do archetypes. Cooper recommends that, at
the least, the archetypes represent a user who will
easily adapt to the changes, one who will have difficulty,
and one who represents the middle-of-theroad
user. By defining this spectrum, communicators
are more likely to address all in a Web site rather
than a single type of user who is represented by the
demographics of the intended users.
In addition, designers can also employ many of the
same storytelling techniques used in museum exhibits in
Web sites. For example, as exhibit designers “immerse”
visitors in a setting, so Web site designers simulate experiences.
The technique is widely touted in games and
online learning. For example, the game SimCity (admittedly,
not yet on the Web) immerses visitors in the development
of a city. A Web-based simulation developed for
internal use by marketing representatives at Dell Computer
mimics a virtual pet, but instead of participants following
the life of an animal, they follow the day of a marketing
representative (Hartley 2000).
Similarly, as exhibit designers try to create a mood for
their exhibits, so can Web designers. For example, a graduate
student who was visiting a cybercafe´ in Manhattan
(New York City) commented on the way that the designer
of the home pages used in this cafe´ re-created the Gotham
mood online:
I sat in the cool air [as] I waited for the default homepage
to load, I noticed that a designer did a wicked cool thing
with the interface. As the gray letters emerged from the
black background, the designer played a movie in the
background. Cars, people, and trucks passed by. The
sound was cool, too, and when a horn sounded I
jumped! The sound didn’t come from the speakers! I
watched the reflection of real life—a busy Manhattan
street—in my screen!
As it works as a storytelling technique in exhibits, so
juxtaposition is an effective storytelling technique online.
On some Web sites, designers visually juxtapose contrasting
content. For example, on vote.com, designers present a
series of issues. Beneath a value statement, designers place
the description of the “pro” position on the left and the
“con” position on the right. Similarly, following a news
story, CNN lists Web sites with related content, letting
visitors surf to sites representing opposite points of view.
Subliminal and subtle messages are also an important
part of Web sites. They tend to show up more in design
efforts helmed by graphic designers and artists than by
those led by usability experts, who tend to take a more
utilitarian approach to design (Every 1999).
6. WORK TOWARDS “WOW!”
What I observed in museums
“The first thing we’re looking for is for people to say,
‘Wow!’” commented the director of the then-new Futures
Center at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia (Behr 1989).
He’s not alone. When reviewing the designs for a proposed
exhibit at the high technology museum I studied, the museum
educator asked her colleagues, “Where’s the fun
factor?” Almost universally, the designers of museum exhibits
hope their visitors have a pleasant experience.
In addition to a tightly crafted plot,
a good story must be populated by
engaging characters.
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Part of this interest stems from a genuine desire of the
design team to share their passion for a subject with visitors.
For example, the idea generator for the industrial
history museum wants to help visitors understand their
ancestors’ experience at work. “[They] spent more than a
third of their lives at work; the museum fills a large void in
people’s understanding of the past.” The director of public
programs at the urban history museum wants her visitors to
“enjoy the experience” and leave exhibits “knowing, thinking,
and feeling.”
In some cases, the need to “wow” visitors emerges
from more practical considerations. According to one exhibit
designer, museums must compete for visitors with
other “cool stuff,” including other museums, movies, theme
parks, performing arts, and sporting events (Mintz 1994;
Zolberg 1994). Some of these competitors are becoming
more like museums. For example, theme parks such as
EPCOT in Orlando, FL, and the Luxor Casino in Las Vegas,
NV, are displaying and interpreting objects, as museums
do, but with larger budgets and more lavish presentations.
This competition raises visitor expectations of effective
exhibits (Mintz 1994, p. 33). In other instances, museums
compete with other types of entertainment, such as movies,
theatrical and musical performances, and sports.
Exhibit designers choose topics with strong popular
interest not only to broaden their audiences, but also to
attract visitors. For example, because many young children
have a fascination with dinosaurs, most science and natural
history museums regularly schedule dinosaur-theme exhibits.
When possible, they have dinosaur skeletons and eggs
in their permanent collections, as do the American Museum
of Natural History and the Los Angeles County Museum of
Natural History. Well-known artists (especially Impressionists)
are similarly popular attractions for art museums.
Well-known objects can also attract visitors. People
visit the Art Institute of Chicago to see the painting “American
Gothic,” the British Library in London to see the
original draft of the Magna Carta, the Israel Museum to see
the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum
of History and Technology to see the collection of
gowns worn by American First Ladies to the balls celebrating
the inaugurations of their husbands as U.S. presidents.
The idea generator at the urban history museum noted that
objects are powerful teachers because
[they] hold their own experiences. People ask “Is this
real?” If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be here.
An object in a temporary exhibit can have a similar
drawing power. A pre-opening furor sparked by comments
made by the mayor of New York City over a painting of the
Virgin Mary composed, in part, of elephant dung lured
visitors to “SENSATION: Young British Artists from the
Saatchi Collection,” an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.
The need to wow visitors continues after they arrive in
the exhibit; designers must maintain visitors’ interest. The
signature objects mentioned earlier serve such a purpose.
Sensory experiences, like the simulated earthquake at the
California ScienCenter in Los Angeles, are intended to engage
senses other than the sight. Although admittedly more
sedate, some museums create a multi-sensory experience
through music or continuous playing of recorded environmental
sounds in the exhibit area. For example, the urban
history museum I studied plays recordings of ambient
sounds in the exhibit.
Some exhibit designers try to create an emotional reaction
among visitors. For example, the urban history museum
displayed a robe from a Ku Klux Klan member. A
dark gallery with metallic accents in the exhibit on computer
networks at the high technology museum was intended
to create a “big brother is watching you” feeling.
Exhibit designers try to transport visitors to other times
and places. The exhibit on the canning factory in the
industrial history museum recreates the world of work in
the late 19th century. The National Maritime Museum in
Greenwich, UK, recreates scenes from the journeys of British
explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries. In its “Traveling
the Pacific” exhibit, the Field Museum of Natural History
recreates a market in the Philippines.
But the exhibits that seem to create the strongest feeling
of “wow” among visitors are interactive ones. The
Exploratorium, a science center in San Francisco, pioneered
the interactive exhibit. At that museum, visitors
perform mini-experiments to discover scientific principles;
then, if they want, they read the explanatory material to
learn more about the principles (Hein 1990).
Another interactive technique is the use of touch objects
that was mentioned earlier. Museum exhibit designers
believe that one of the most powerful learning experiences
in museums occurs when a visitor can touch real objects, so
they try to provide this experience whenever possible. In
some instances, however, it is not. Contact with oil from
human hands, for example, can damage fragile artwork.
Climatic conditions can destroy documents. Light fades
fabrics. Visitors sometimes damage objects, though not
always intentionally. A visitor to the Minneapolis Institute
of Arts thought a chair in one of the galleries was intended
for weary visitors. When it broke after he sat on it, he
learned that the chair was actually a delicate Chinese antique.
But in cases where the potential for damage is slight,
or the museum has a duplicate of the object, designers like
Subliminal and subtle messages are
also an important part of Web sites.
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to place it on display as a touch object.
The public programs and education staffs can enhance
the sense of “wow” in an exhibit. Public programs are those
aimed at the general public. Sometimes the programs involve
craftspeople demonstrating a type of craft on display.
For example, the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA,
scheduled demonstrations by carpenters and blacksmiths
to complement its exhibit of tools. Science museums often
schedule demonstrations. For example, SciTrek, the Science
and Technology Museum of Atlanta, schedules several
demonstrations each day.
The education staff focuses almost exclusively on
school groups visiting the museum. According to the museum
educator at the urban history museum I studied, her
colleagues at other museums typically develop scavenger
hunts and activity baskets as tools to help young visitors
notice all parts of an exhibit or focus on parts of special
interests to their teachers (if the students attend with a
school group). The idea implementer at the industrial history
museum in my study added that she also develops
materials that classroom teachers can use to prepare students
for an upcoming visit and debrief the visit afterwards.
Lessons for Web design
As exhibit designers try to “wow” visitors with provocative
subjects, interactivity, and similar techniques, so must Web
site designers. One particular area of interest to Web site
designers is the design of the interaction between users and
the computer. Web site designers try to “wow” users in a
number of ways.
r “Splash” screens, which display a brief animated sequence,
are intended to capture and hold user interest.
Web sites for commercial films, for example,
usually start with an elaborate splash screen intended
to generate excitement about the film. But
the scene must splash quickly, or visitors will surf
elsewhere.
r Profiling—the act of capturing information about a
given user and using that information to tailor the
Web site to that user’s interests—attempts to “wow”
visitors through personalization.
r Online communities and scheduled chats can foster
a sense of loyalty among users and increase the
number of visits to the site, just as public programs
and education are also intended to help visitors discover
parts of museum exhibits.
Two challenges face designers in bringing “wow” to
their Web sites. The first pertains to technology. With each
technical development often comes a new means of “wowing”
users. But the challenge to Web site designers is
finding techniques that engage users within the context of
the Web site content, rather than as merely demonstrating
the technology.
Furthermore, the same technologies that let Web sites
develop and enhance profiles of users also involve an
invasion of user privacy. Web site designers must determine
at what point the value of better knowing users
exceeds the risk of offending users by collecting and using
information that users might not want anyone to be collecting.
European law severely limits such practices. In
contrast, American Internet users have shown a surprisingly
high tolerance to tracking.
The second challenge facing designers in bringing
“wow” to their Web sites comes from the almost religious
battle between usability experts and graphic designers on
ideal approaches to Web design. Usability experts, led by
the likes of Jakob Nielsen, tend to focus on observable,
measurable patterns of effectiveness that can be independently
verified through usability research. But measuring
affective responses like “wow” will tax even the bestrefined
research methodologies, and graphic designers and
others with backgrounds in the arts and humanities are
often hard pressed to produce data from universal research
that would support the use of nonstandard approaches,
like those of storytelling (Cloninger 2000).
7. AVOID “SOUND BLEED” AND OTHER MEDIA NIGHTMARES.
What I observed in museums
Two thirds of the way up the back wall of the entrance
lobby to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is a horizontal
line of lights that lead around a curve and beckon
visitors through a hidden doorway. Beyond the doorway is
a long, low, dark theater with built-in benches. On the
three oversized screens at the front of this theater, a slide
and sound show continuously plays. It introduces visitors
to the primary temporary exhibit. When visitors leave the
theater, they walk up a half a flight of stairs and enter that
exhibit.
Visitors need no beckoning lights to see the “[city] in
your face” video in the city history exhibit at the urban
history museum I studied. It simultaneously plays on 12
monitors of various sizes hanging from the ceiling at the
entrance to the exhibit. A glass wall behind the monitors
gives visitors a glimpse into each of the four galleries;
visitors can enter any gallery they choose.
At the end of a visit to the exhibit on the canning
factory in my study, visitors participate in a computer-
One particular area of interest to
Web site designers is the design of
the interaction between users and
the computer.
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based survey that asks them about the types of jobs they
saw in the exhibit and helps them relate them to jobs in
today’s economy that might interest them.
As exhibit design teams at the Walker Art Center, urban
history museum, and industrial history museum have done,
so exhibit design teams at many museums are integrating
media into their exhibits. In some instances, media presentations
are as central to an exhibit as the objects. For
example, in addition to the “in your face” video, the exhibit
at the urban history museum includes three video theaters.
The theaters are placed between pairs of galleries and are
used to explain the transition from the time covered by the
first to the time covered by the second. The videos playing
there were created from photos and film footage in the
museum archives. The idea generator explained that these
videos provided an efficient means of telling the stories of
these transitions; stories that the museum had neither the
objects nor the gallery space to tell.
Other museums use computers in the exhibit area to
provide visitors with access to additional information. For
example, the Minnesota Historical Society has included
some of the oral histories in its collection on a computer in
its exhibit “Minnesota A to Z” so visitors have access to life
stories of local citizens while learning about Minnesota
culture. On interactive stations placed in education rooms
near the galleries, the Seattle Art Museum provides an
additional level of documentation about objects from its
permanent collection and links users to background and
related material.
The Internet is also becoming increasingly important to
exhibits. Some Web sites serve as online brochures for
exhibits, as at the Wing Keye Museum in Seattle. Some Web
sites extend the visit by providing information that visitors
might explore in advance and other information they might
explore afterwards, such as the information accompanying
the Field Museum of Natural History’s permanent collection.
Some Web sites serve as exhibits in their own right,
either displaying digital versions of materials that are no
longer on exhibit or separate displays that are available
only online, such as the Museum of Modern Art’s “Art
safari.”
Although videos and computer displays can extend an
exhibit, each of the exhibit design teams I studied expressed
frustration in working with media. New technology,
inexperience, and significant under-budgeting affected
the development of the virtual tour guides for the
exhibit on networks at the high technology museum. Programming
bugs plagued some of the computer displays in
the exhibit on the canning factory. What frustrated exhibit
designers most, however, was that the program was written
with proprietary software and was not documented. So
when the company that wrote the program went bankrupt
and the programmers literally left the country, the $10,000
station (about 5 percent of the exhibit budget) was unusable.
Information on another computer was still usable, but
the content was out of date and the staff did not have funds
to revise the content.
Other than at the high technology museum, video
production went smoothly for the museums studied. But
exhibit designers wondered whether visitors actually
watched the videos. My observation of visitors to a science
center suggests not. The center had several video stations
within its exhibit space. Each played video on demand; that
is, a video would play after a visitor pressed a start button.
Few visitors stopped at the videos.
Perhaps they were concerned about the noise from the
video calling attention to themselves in the otherwise quiet
space. Such sound bleed (that is, sound that can be heard
outside its display area) is a practical issue in using video
and other audio tools. Because many visitors like to read
labels or think as they ponder an exhibit, museums are
typically quiet places. Loud sounds from a video within the
exhibit could break their concentration. Worse, should
sounds in one gallery “bleed” (that is, be heard) in the next,
the sound seems illogical and out of place, and reflects
poorly on the designers.
Lessons for Web design
As in museum exhibits, video, audio, and specialized software
can provide significant value to a Web site. But using
them can also create substantial practical challenges.
r Although narration is often helpful for people with
reading difficulties and sound effects demonstrate
audio content, the noise created by one user’s
computer can “bleed” throughout a workplace and
distract other workers in the area. Furthermore,
users can typically read a passage to themselves
faster than a narrator can, and as a result, they
may find narration more of a roadblock than a
benefit.
r At the time this article was written, regular telephone
lines have a limited capacity for transmitting data, a
fact that can slow the display of some Web content
(large graphics, animation, and video, for example).
r In some implementations, users need special software
called plug-ins to play video and audio. Some
users do not have access to plug-ins, making their
use impractical. Even when users have access to
plug ins, some experts warn against using them, in
In some instances, media
presentations are as central to an
exhibit as the objects.
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the event that users have difficulty or the image becomes
garbled. For example, students of one online
university had difficulty viewing online lectures because
the intranet from which they worked did not
allow plug-ins. For these reasons, some Web gurus
like Jakob Nielsen recommend against using plug-in
technology.
r Some Web site designers like to take advantage of
the latest technical improvements to Web technology.
Because users are often slow to upgrade their
browsers, they might not have access to that technology.
For example, when frames were first introduced,
designers who wanted to use them immediately
had to implement frame and non-frame
versions of their Web sites.
Finally, as computing increasingly moves off of desktop
and laptop computers and onto other types of devices like
mobile phones and personal digital assistants, designs for
one type of display increasingly will fail to display effectively
on the users’ equipment.
8. “ATTENDANCE FIGURES MEASURE MARKETING
STRATEGIES, NOT EXHIBITION STRENGTHS.”
What I observed in museums
One of the most challenging aspects of exhibit design is
assessing its effect on visitors. One common measure used
by museums is attendance. In most instances, because
most museum admissions let visitors see any exhibit, attendance
figures pertain primarily to the museum in its entirety.
In these cases, attendance spikes (that is, sudden
increases in attendance) are usually attributed to changes
in the make-up of exhibits. For example, a spike that
follows the opening of a new permanent exhibit is attributed
to that exhibit. In some instances, however, museums
charge separately for blockbuster temporary exhibits or
exhibits located in another facility. In those cases, attendance
figures pertain to the separately charged exhibit.
“Wouldn’t it be better to judge an exhibition’s success—
or failure—by attendance figures?” asks Chambers
(1999). No, she determines, observing that “attendance
figures measure marketing strategies, not exhibition
strengths” (p. 31).
According to the American Association of Museums’
Standards for Museum Exhibitions, an exhibit is successful
if it is physically, intellectually, and emotionally satisfying
to visitors. Visitor research is a discipline within the field of
museum studies that assesses the impact of exhibitions and
their components. Visitor research explores a variety of
issues, such as the demographics of visitors to particular
types of museums (like science museums), the amount of
time visitors spend reading labels, the objects that visitors
focus on, the themes that visitors recall from exhibits, and
the exhibits that visitors actually go through and the ones
that they ignore. Chambers notes that it is
significant that museum exhibitions began to be a topic
for professional discussion just when American advertising
was developing into a science. Research into the
power of advertising design to attract and hold attention
(to sell a product) soon spilled over into the museum
world and created new criteria for visual presentations
and their power of persuasion. Early visitor studies of the
1930s took their cue from psychological studies about
the manipulative techniques of advertising, as many of
them still do. (1999, p. 33)
Most of these studies are quantitative and results are used
as much to generate design guidelines as to assess effectiveness.
Although they value it in theory, few museums actually
have the resources to perform their own visitor research.
Certainly the museums in this study did not. Other than
attendance figures and evaluations from public programs, the
design teams in my study relied almost exclusively on anecdotal
evidence to assess the effectiveness of their work. The
designers at the high technology museum were the most
rigorous, using a form of usability test to assess the effectiveness
of proposed exhibits. They would place prototypes of
interactive displays in a gallery and observe visitors’ interactions
with them. In some cases, staff members would also
interview visitors to get more specific feedback. They did not
apply such rigor to assess the effectiveness of a completed
exhibit, relying primarily on comments from feedback forms
placed at the end of the exhibit and comments relayed by
docents working in the exhibit.
The staff at the urban history museum placed a comment
book at the end of its exhibit on the history of the city.
Once a month, the idea implementer would record comments
from the book and share them with the rest of the
exhibit design team. Sometimes visitors to that museum
would contact the staff. The exhibit design team generally
considered itself to be successful when they received requests
from visitors for more information or the opportunity
to visit the museum library.
When feasible, museum staffs try more rigorous approaches.
The National Aquarium in Baltimore, MD,
commissioned a study to assess the long-term impact of
an exhibition on visitors. According to Adelman (2000),
they wanted to see whether or not the exhibit had a
transformative effect on visitors. Paris (2000) noted that
transformation results from a combination of process
and outcomes that are neither well understood nor documented.
The researchers noted that because of the long
time frame and high cost of this type of study, few
museums can maintain such evaluation programs on an
ongoing basis.
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Lessons for Web design
Because we can easily do so, it is tempting to report the
number of visitors as the measure of effectiveness of a Web
site. We even have technology that tells us where visitors
come from and where they go when they leave our sites.
But as counting attendance at museum exhibits may only
measure marketing strategies, so counting the number of
visitors to a site may only measure marketing strategies.
Another tempting measure might be measures of system
performance (such as the speed of loading) or checklists
of usability items (such as the number of links per page
or the extent of use of passive voice). But these characteristics
only correlate with usability; they do not guarantee
either usability or users’ ability to perform the tasks for
which the Web site was designed.
Only when users can perform the tasks for which a Web
site is intended is the Web site successful. If the Web site was
designed with clear objectives, then one key measurement of
effectiveness is whether users can achieve those objectives.
To ensure the long-term success of the Web site, however, it
is important to also gauge user satisfaction with the site. If
users are not satisfied with the experience of using the Web
site, they are not likely to use it in the future if given an
alternative.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Even with the creation of immersive environments, exhibit
designers recognize that exhibits are, at best, artificial environments.
A room that’s been rebuilt inside a museum exhibit
is no longer part of a real house. Fire alarms from the 1890s
that sit on walls in the exhibits on urban history and networks
are no longer working. Exhibit designers acknowledge that
one of their main tasks is to give visitors tools to better
understand the outside world—not replace it.
Although we recognize that we are creating online
communities with our Web sites and especially when we
provide opportunities for users to interact with one another
online, we too must recognize that online worlds are ultimately
artificial ones and that people still need direct,
ongoing contact with one another to learn and work.
I learned this in my work also. Although my primary
interest was design techniques, what struck me most was
the cohesiveness of design teams in this study. In each
museum, I observed that the idea generator served as more
than the nexus of ideas; this person also served as an
informal educator of the team. The idea generator and, in
some instances, the idea implementer were the only ones
who had personally learned exhibit design for museums.
Other team members relied on the idea generator for guiding
concepts of design, and terms introduced by the idea
generator were used by all members of the design team.
For example, the idea generators at the urban and industrial
history museums used the term immersion as did their
staffs. The idea generator at the high technology museum
used the term immersive, as did his staff.
Similarly, rather than learn about museum studies, exhibit
designers in my study often look to other design disciplines
for ideas. For example, the designer at the high technology
museum relies on his retail experience for ideas.
The enduring lesson that Web site designers can learn
from this study is that we must take responsibility for our
roles. Not only do we design Web sites for users, but we
also provide intellectual and emotional leadership for our
entire design teams. TC
REFERENCES
Adelman, Leslie. 2000. “Results

Perhaps these concerns sound familiar:
r Visitors complain that they cannot find information
of interest. One observes, “I know there’s information
about that type of robotics here, but darned if I
can find it.”
r Visitors enter the site but don’t stay particularly long.
Some might even express an interest in the subject;
let’s say it’s modern art. But they leave almost as
quickly as they enter without paying much attention
to the artwork that the designers painstakingly displayed.
r Other visitors spend hours at the site but never seem
to notice particular sections. For example, a visitor
might be thoroughly familiar with the content on
radios but oblivious to the section on industrial
hardware.
These observations could describe visitors to Web
sites, none of which are more than 10 years old. Actually,
these observations describe museum visitors. As a type of
institution, the museum has existed for nearly three centuries,
and these concerns are nothing new to museum exhibit
designers. Since the first research in the late 1920s and
early 1930s, museum professionals have observed visitor
behavior and, in response, transformed exhibit design
practices (Chambers 1999). These practices were further
refined in the 1960s to 1980s as museums redefined their
mission, from warehouses of artifacts to institutions of
informal learning (that is, learning without a predetermined
outcome) (Bloom and Powell 1984).
I systematically observed current exhibit design practices
as part of an extended study. The primary purpose of
that study was to see how practices from my primary field
of study, instructional design (whose primary focus is on
formal learning in the classroom, through workbooks, and
online, with predetermined outcomes) transferred to the
design of informal learning in museums.
An interpretation of these observations yielded a more
flexible perspective on instructional design (Carliner 1998).
It also yielded a number of communication practices that
could be transferred from the community of museum exhibit
designers to the community of information designers.
Sharing that second set of interpretations is my purpose
here.
Following a brief description of the research project, I
share 8 lessons, or categories of practices, that I observed.
For each lesson, I first describe in detail what I observed in
museums. Immediately afterwards, I suggest how information
designers might apply these lessons when working on
technical communication products. I close with some
broader thoughts about these lessons.
“WHAT SEPARATES A MUSEUM WORTH SUFFERING FOR
FROM ONE YOU WOULDN9T STOOP TO BE SICK IN?”
So wondered Judith Stone, writing in a special 1993 issue of
Discover that focused on the emotional and educational
impact of science museums on scientists and science writers.
I asked myself the same question.
Museums have always fascinated me because they are
some of the most complex and successful forms of scientific
and technical communication. To answer the same
question as Judith Stone, then transfer the lessons learned
Manuscript received 21 June 2000; revised 19 September 2000;
accepted 25 September 2000.
66 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
back to the professional communities of instructional and
information designers, I undertook a qualitative study of
the design for three permanent exhibitions in history and
technology museums, and related background and follow-
up research.
The primary purpose of the study was to understand
how members of the design team addressed instructional
issues as they designed exhibits and to see which design
practices for formal learning transferred to the design for
informal learning in museum exhibits. The exhibits were
purposely selected and included exhibits on
r The history of a major city in the U.S. at an urban
history museum
r The history of the canning industry in the late 19th
century at an industrial history museum in the U.S.
r Computer and telecommunications networks at a
high technology museum in the U.S.
In the main study, each member of the “core” design
team was interviewed three times. Core team members are
those who play a primary role in designing and developing
the exhibit. These team members include
r An idea generator who devises the concept for the
exhibit, chooses the content, and writes the “storyline”
(a detailed description of the exhibit and the
preliminary draft of copy for the labels that appear
in the exhibit)
r The exhibit designer, who prepares the physical design
of the exhibit, including its floor plan and
graphic identity; chooses wall and floor coverings;
designs display cases; and prepares blue prints
r An idea implementer who acts as a general contractor
of sorts for the exhibit, securing objects for the
exhibit that are not in the museum collection, overseeing
the work of the peripheral team (specialists
who implement the plans), ensuring conservation of
items to be displayed, and making sure that the design
is implemented according to plans
For each exhibit, members of the peripheral team were
also interviewed when feasible. These team members provide
specialized skills needed to develop a part of the
exhibition. Skills needed on the peripheral team vary
among exhibits. Typically, this team includes a museum
ducator (whose job is to develop programs geared toward
school groups that are related to the exhibit content),
public programs coordinator (whose job is to develop
programs geared toward adults and the general public),
registrar (whose job is to oversee the documentation and
protection of objects in exhibits), media specialists (including
video and interactive specialists), and editor (whose job
is to edit the copy for all labels and gallery guides associated
with an exhibition). In addition to the interviews, I
observed team meetings and reviewed project plans when
feasible.
The study followed the grounded-theory methodology.
A central feature of this methodology is constant
comparative analysis. That is, data is constantly analyzed
throughout the data collection process to devise theories;
collected data is later compared with the evolving theory to
determine whether it supports the theory (Strauss and
Corbin 1994, p. 273). Strauss and Corbin suggest a threephase
process for analyzing data. The first phase is open
coding, which they define as “the process of breaking
down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and categorizing
data.” The next phase is axial coding, “a set of
procedures whereby data [is] put back together in new
ways after open coding, by making connections between
categories” (Strauss and Corbin 1990, p. 96). The last phase
is selective coding, “the process of selecting the core category,
systematically relating it to other categories, validating
those relationships, and filling in categories that need
further refinement and development” (1990, p. 116).
Whenever they are coding, researchers mainly look for
dominant patterns—patterns that appear in all sites studied.
Researchers also look for weak patterns: ones that
occur in at least two sites. Researchers try to explain why a
weak pattern might not be observed at the other sites.
Besides the core research for this study, I conducted
preliminary and follow-up research. This research consisted
of a literature review; observations of visitor behavior
in a science center in a large city in the U.S.; visits to
over 200 museums in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Asia;
and participation in two conferences and other events for
museum exhibit designers.
1. “DID ANYONE TARGET AN AGE GROUP?”
What I observed in museums
Because visits to museums are voluntary in nature, museum
staffs must motivate people to visit (Csikzentmihalyi
and Hermanson 1995). First, museum staffs must motivate
visitors to enter the building. To do that, they must work
past an impression among the public that museums are
primarily intended for people from upper economic classes
and the majority religious and racial groups (Zolberg 1994).
Such impressions have, in the past, made people from
outside of those groups feel unwelcome in museums. This
challenge is similar to that faced by businesses that want to
sell products and services outside of their countries or to
historically marginalized groups like women, African
Americans, Latinos, and gays and lesbians.
To address this concern, museums have attempted to
broaden their constituencies. This is a policy of the mu-
The study followed the groundedtheory
methodology.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Carliner Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design
Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001 ² TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 67
seum profession backed by practices in specific museums.
Believing that diversity behind the scenes is essential to
representing diversity elsewhere in museums (including
exhibits), museums have established formal relationships
with constituency groups. For example, the high technology
museum in this study has an advisory board of lowincome
children, and the Brooklyn Museum has an outreach
project with the surrounding neighborhood.
Museums have also made a concerted effort to broaden the
socio-economic, gender, and ethnic backgrounds of their
staffs and boards, and continue to do so (Hirzy 1992).
These behind-the-scenes changes are reflected in exhibits
that have a different type of appeal than in the past.
In some instances, exhibits are designed to appeal to the
general public. Called “blockbusters,” they are temporary
exhibits (running from a few months to a year), focusing on
well-known topics with broad public interest; they are
primarily intended to lure large numbers of visitors (Lee
1994). One of the first was the 1979 King Tut exhibit that
visited major art museums, and it has been followed by
blockbusters such as the Monet exhibit that visited the Art
Institute of Chicago in 1995 and the Titanic exhibit that
visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in
2000. Museums can see attendance surge by as much as 33
to 50 percent during a blockbuster.
ther exhibits are designed to appeal to targeted constituencies,
ones whom museums typically ignored in the
past. Some of these exhibits are temporary, like the retrospective
of African-American artist Jacob Lawrence at the
High Museum of Art in Atlanta and an exhibit on the
contributions of women engineers at the Franklin Institute
in Philadelphia.
Some exhibits for targeted audiences are permanent,
like the First People’s galleries in the Canadian Museum of
Civilization in Ottawa. Following its most recent renovation,
the Minneapolis Institute of Arts devoted half of its
permanent gallery space to non-Western art. Previously,
such art occupied less than a third of the gallery space.
Within these exhibits, staffs design interpretive materials
like labels (signs within the exhibit that contain explanatory
text) and media presentations. When developing
these materials, staffs take into account the diversity of
experiences that affect interpretation of an object because
staff members want to avoid foisting their own interpretations
on the public. Many interpretive materials now describe
the outside factors that shape the meaning of objects
and topics on display.
In addition to exhibits, museums also provide related
public programs that are targeted to particular communities.
Some programs focus on singles, such as the High
Museum’s Young Professionals, which is geared toward
people under the age of 40. Other programs focus on
underprivileged youth, such as an after-school program
sponsored by the Computer Museum.
Although some exhibits and activities are intended to
draw targeted audiences, exhibit designers know that the
museum is a public place and the entire public must feel
welcome in each exhibit. So ultimately, these designers
lack a clearly defined audience. In fact, at a meeting of
exhibit designers at the 2000 American Association of Museums
Annual Meeting, one designer asked, “Did anyone
target an age group?”
Still, efforts to broaden the appeal of museums have
changed public attitudes toward them over time; they’re
places people increasingly choose to go. In the U.S., for
example, more people visit museums in a given year than
attend professional sports events (Ivey 2000).
Lessons for Web design
Like museum exhibit designers, designers of Web sites
need to appeal to a variety of demographic groups. As
businesses increasingly market globally, the literature on
technical communication provides substantial guidance in
addressing geographically distinct markets for whom information
will be translated and localized (Hoft 1995).
The community of Web site designers and technical
communicators pays less attention to other aspects of cultural
difference. For example, little has been written about
the impact of occupational culture and socioeconomic
class on technical documents. More significantly, because
many believe that technical communication is objective
(that is, free from bias), technical communicators are rarely
encouraged to identify their own cultural biases and explore
how they might affect the communication products
that they develop.
2. “KEEP THE COLLECTION FROM
KLUMMETTING YOUR GUESTS.”
What I observed in museums
The industrial history museum that I studied does not have
enough exhibit space to physically display the tens of
thousands of hand tools in its collection, much less the
other artifacts, like machinery and manufactured goods. At
the time of the study, the museum did not have enough
storage space on the premises to store objects it could not
display. The staff stored them in a rented storage space
several miles from the museum. The idea implementer
Other exhibits are designed to
appeal to targeted constituencies,
ones whom museums typically
ignored in the past.
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Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design Carliner
68 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
explained that museums typically display only 10 percent
of their collections at a given time.
Objects form the centerpiece of most museum exhibits.
Because of that, and because the primary purpose of museums
is educational, museum professionals often refer to
their work as object-based learning. One of the most significant
choices a museum exhibit design team makes,
therefore, is what to display. Choices are purposeful. As
exhibit designers learned when they would cram entire
collections into a series of glass cases, which visitors would
ignore, “You have to keep the collection from klummeting
[overwhelming] your guests.” But in choosing which objects
are displayed, exhibit design teams also choose which
objects remain in storage.
This choice is made in the early stages of design.
Because museum exhibits effectively involve a major renovation
of a building and therefore require budgets that
exceed the costs of most homes, they are funded in two
phases. The first is the less expensive planning phase,
which is similar to the needs analysis and requirements
phase of a technical communication project. If funders
have concerns about the plans, those concerns can be
resolved before spending large sums of money needed to
actually build the exhibit.
In the planning phase, the idea generator works with a
team of content experts and educational specialists to devise
a focus for a proposed exhibit. Then the idea generator
and idea implementer work together to develop the detailed
plans for the exhibit, called the storyline. The storyline
is:
a written document that presents the key elements of the
visitor experience. The storyline refines the subject of the
exhibition, identifies key topics to be addressed in the
exhibition, and discusses possibilities for presentation,
including how content in the exhibition might flow and
be presented, and the types of objects to be included.
Members of the staff who are going to work on the
exhibit design team are identified at this time, although
only the idea generator and [idea implementer] take the
most active roles during this phase. The staff often reviews
the museum collection at this point to determine
what objects it already has and the objects it might need
to collect to effectively realize the exhibition. (Carliner
1998, p. 84)
In other words, only after the content is chosen do exhibit
design teams choose objects. In some cases, several objects
might meet the needs of the content, so design teams
choose objects based on their anticipated appeal to visitors
and condition. In some cases, because funds for conserving
objects are more plentiful when associated with an exhibit,
the design team might choose an object that needs conservation.
In other cases, the design team might purposely
choose a touch object—that is, one that visitors will be
encouraged to handle. Touch objects must be physically
durable.
Some museums have addressed the problem of large
collections on an institutional level. Those museums that
have comprehensive collections in each topic area addressed
by their missions need buildings of immense physical
size merely to display and house these collections.
Within a given topic area, some collections are sufficiently
large that they could comprise museums themselves.
Museums have tried many approaches to shield visitors
from this enormity. Some have spawned other museums.
For example, the Washington, DC-based Smithsonian Institution
has several museums, each focusing on a particular
subject area. The London-based Tate Gallery opened a
satellite museum to display its modern art collection. The
New York-based Guggenheim Museum opened one of its
satellites on another continent, in Bilbao, Spain.
Although museums usually have more objects than
they can display, many still find themselves short of objects
when planning new exhibits. For example, each of the
museums that I studied lacked objects in their collections
needed for the exhibits studied. In two of the exhibits, new
acquisitions represented over 50 percent of the objects
ultimately displayed. In each exhibit, too, designers used
fabricated objects (that is, built for the exhibit rather than
true historical artifacts). Some objects were fabricated because
the designers wanted visitors to be able to touch
them, and real objects would fall apart under such wear.
Other objects were fabricated because real ones did not
exist.
On the other hand, entire museums have opened with
signature buildings and without extensive collections to
support them. Building collections is proving difficult for
these museums. For example, the core collections for many
natural history museums opened at the beginning of the
20th century are specimens of large animals collected on
hunts in wilderness areas. Killing endangered species of
animals for display in museums is no longer an acceptable
practice. Similarly, as prices for art skyrocketed in the 1980s
and 1990s, many art museums that have seemingly large
In the planning phase, the idea
generator works with a team of
content experts and educational
specialists to devise a focus for a
proposed exhibit.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Carliner Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design
Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001 ² TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 69
acquisitions budgets still do not have enough money to
purchase pieces for their collections.
Lessons for Web design
As museums have learned to focus exhibits and limit the
amount of information to which they expose visitors, so
designers of Web sites must learn to focus their content and
limit the amount of information to which they expose
users.
With easily available computer storage and increasingly
sophisticated search mechanisms, communicators
have little technical incentive to limit information. Furthermore,
with the promise of ready access to all the knowledge
in the world through the World Wide Web, some
communicators understandably feel an ethical commitment
to provide full access to information that the user has a
need to know. That technical communicators have always
been committed to completeness only strengthens this
commitment.
But our values and technology conflict with users’
needs and experiences. Consider the following:
r According to studies by User Interface Engineering,
using a search mechanism leads users to information
of interest less frequently than links (1997). That fact
places an ongoing premium on the ability to carefully
structure and chunk information for users.
r The growth of profiling software and intelligent
agents provides communicators with both the incentive
and tools to tailor each online experience as
much as possible to the unique needs of a user. The
effectiveness of the rules that operate this software
directly emerges from communicators’ ability to
identify users’ bottom line goals and scenarios of
use, as well as to develop lists of relevant characteristics
that affect a profile.
Technology, alone, then does not solve the problem of
“klummeting users” with information; only design practice
does. For example, one tool in controlling information is
behavioral objectives (also called learning objectives). Objectives
state what users should be able to do after completing
a tutorial. Instructional designers develop objectives
before starting work on a tutorial and use them to
focus their work. They include only content that directly
supports the objectives. Other content is discarded or, if it
must be incorporated, changes the scope for the project
(Mager 1997).
3. “AN EXHIBIT IS NOT A BOOK ON A WALL.”
What I observed in museums
When the design was driven by subject-matter experts
called curators, the heart of most exhibits was a series of
cases crammed with artifacts (such as paintings, furniture,
textiles, photographs, and documents) and accompanied
by detailed documentation on each object (usually typewritten).
This dense documentation was primarily prepared
by one scholar for use by other scholars.
This reference-like approach to displaying objects created
a barrier between museums and the public. The public
was overwhelmed by the quantity of objects and the technical
language and detail of the documentation. In fact,
studies indicated that few visitors actually read labels, and,
of those who did, most spent less than half a minute doing
so. When museums started broadening their audiences two
decades ago, they realized that
[the] museums of the past [would have to] be set aside,
reconstructed, and transformed from a cemetery of brica-
brac into a nursery of living thoughts. (La Follette
1983, p. 41)
In response, exhibit designers transformed their approach
to design, using four concepts to guide them in their efforts.
Guiding Design Concept A: Immersion The first guiding
concept is immersion. According to the idea generator
at the urban history museum I studied, a museum exhibition
should immerse visitors in its story. She noted that a
nearby zoo uses this immersion theory of exhibit design.
The zoo’s designers “put people where the animals are and
let [visitors] become a part of the experiment.” She applies
these beliefs and theories to all the exhibits at her museum.
“It’s theater,” she noted, “yet the objects are real, just as
animals are real [in the zoo].” In her exhibit, visitors are
immersed in the city at four periods in time: an open field
from the time preceding settlement, a city street from the
late 19th century, another city street from the early 20th
century, and a highway scene from the late 20th century.
The designers of the two other exhibits studied also used
immersion.
Guiding Design Concept B: Themes The second
guiding concept is dividing complex topics into a limited
number of key themes. A designer participating in the
exhibit brainstorming session at the 2000 American Association
of Museums Annual Meeting called this “modularity.”
Because topics for exhibitions are often broad
and the number of facts presented is more than a visitor
can process in the short time of a typical visit, designers
try to identify a limited number of broad points on which
to focus, and build exhibits around them. Each of the
exhibits that I studied had fewer than five themes. By
limiting the number of themes, designers hope to increase
the likelihood that visitors will better recall the
insights from exhibits.
For example, designers focused on four key themes in
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Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design Carliner
70 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
the development of the city featured in the exhibit studied
at the urban history museum rather present a timeline of
development. These four themes corresponded to four
distinct phases of the city’s development, and the design
team built four galleries, each immersing visitors in a phase
of the city’s development.
Guiding Concept C: Layering The third guiding concept
is that of layering content. The idea generator at the
urban history museum explained it best. She insisted that
an exhibit is not “a book on a wall.” In other words, visitors
should not have to read all the labels to learn about the
topic of the exhibit. Instead, they should be able to explore
in as much detail as they like and leave feeling as if they
learned a complete topic.
She designed her exhibit so that labels—text signs on
the wall that provide explanatory information—are presented
in three levels of depth. Visitors can look at the label
and identify its tier, and read all the labels in a chosen tier
see a complete story. These tiers included:
1. Introduction to the gallery. These labels provide
the title of the gallery and an orienting quote. The orienting
quotes originated during the time period depicted in
the gallery. These labels are the largest, so visitors can
easily identify them several feet away.
2. Theme labels. These labels introduce key themes
in the exhibit. The labels consist of a heading, a limited
amount of text (no more than 12 lines) and, occasionally,
a drawing or reproduced photograph. The text on these
labels is large enough to be seen a few feet away.
3. Object labels. These labels, the most numerous in
the exhibition, describe characteristics of individual objects,
such as their significance or the materials used to
make them. Not every object has a label. The text on
these labels is the longest, but rarely longer than 12 lines.
The type on the labels is small; visitors must stand close
to read it. Some of the object labels also have pictures to
further amplify points.
Guiding Concept D: Skimmability The fourth guiding
concept is skimmability. Because visitors come from all
ages and educational and professional backgrounds, designers
cannot assume they know the technical language
associated with the subject matter of the exhibit. In addition,
because visitors are usually standing on their feet
when they read the labels, reading labels can quickly become
an uncomfortable experience. Finally, most visitors
usually have a limited amount of time, either because they
have other activities scheduled, want to leave time to see
other parts of the museum, or are visiting with an impatient
friend or relative. Therefore, designers must write the labels
to be skimmed while standing, rather than studied
while sitting.
Lessons for Web design
Just as the designers of early television quickly realized that
a television show was not a radio show with pictures, so
designers of Web sites are learning that readers do not
prefer to read long passages of text on a computer screen,
electronically distributed books not withstanding (Marsh
1997). In fact, some studies show that users do not read
online; they skim. Users don’t skim everything, merely the
first few lines on a screen. In those instances where they do
read word-for-word, users typically read more slowly online
than they do in a book (Horton 1995).
As objects distinguish museum exhibits from books,
and pictures distinguish television from radio, so the ability
to interact and the ability to integrate several media distinguish
computers from books and other types of media.
Many of the design techniques used to control the flow of
data in a museum exhibit may also work online:
r As exhibit designers use immersion to recreate environments
for visitors, so Web site designers can use
simulation to recreate environments for users.
r As exhibit designers layer content so visitors can
choose a desired level of complexity, so interface
designers can create layered interfaces to match users’
experience levels and layered help systems to
match users’ appetite for information (Wilson 1994).
r As exhibit designers design skimmable exhibits, so
Web site designers present content in a scannable
mode, using such devices as navigational tools,
headings, lists, charts, and graphics to promote scanning
(Carliner 2000).
4. “EVEN THE BEST SIGNAGE CAN9T
FIX A POORLY DESIGNED MUSEUM.”
What I observed in museums
The designer of the exhibit on computer and telecommunications
networks at the high technology museum I studied
commented that visitors should have the “realization
that what [they]’re experiencing is unique, powerful, and
challenging.” A good exhibition “keeps [visitors] coming
around the corner” and “makes [them] want to explore.”
Because the physical location of objects within an
exhibit has a significant impact on visitors’ experiences,
exhibit designers try to consciously use space.
Conscious use starts with the general layout of the
exhibit. Some designers like to create a hub of activity, such
as the designer of the exhibit on networks:
I wanted a big circle in the center, as if the exhibit
radiated from a hub. I like to start with a larger metaphor.
. . . Even if people don’t realize it, the exhibit has
strength of that organization. It makes everything flow
naturally, according to a plan. Otherwise, it’s just a
space layout. . . . Whether people understand or not,
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Carliner Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design
Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001 ² TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 71
they know something’s there for a reason. . . . [Visitors]
should always see the hub. That’s how it is on the
network.
The concept evolved from my work in retail. The [bookstores
I designed] have a book layout, with “pages” on
either side [of a central aisle]. Nobody thinks about it but
it’s an organization method that, at the least, makes
sense.
Others prefer a layout that lets visitors enter from any
point. That’s what the idea generator at the urban history
museum I studied prefers. Rather than following a timeline,
she wanted to make it possible for visitors to enter the
exhibit at any point in time and coherently follow the story
forward or backward from that point.
Sometimes a controlled approach is necessary. Because
sequence is integral to telling the story of the canning
factory, designers planned for it to be followed in a specific
sequence, with definite starting, middle, and ending points.
Some museums use the sequential approach as a means of
controlling crowds. For example, the temporary galleries in
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Minneapolis Institute
of Arts are intended to be followed in sequence because it
is the only way to manage the large crowds in blockbuster
exhibits and because these exhibits are separately ticketed,
requiring a single entrance.
Floors and walls also become design elements. For
example, the designers at the urban history museum in my
study used flooring that would simulate a sidewalk in one
gallery and a highway in another. The designer of the
exhibit on networks that I studied chose a mesh wall
covering to enhance the high tech mood and image of the
exhibit.
Raising or lowering the level of light in a gallery also
helps create the mood of an exhibit. For example, lighting
in the galleries of street scenes in the urban history museum
I studied have a high lighting level to simulate daylight.
Sometimes lighting levels are dictated by practical
considerations. Because fragile textiles, books, sketches,
and paintings fade in bright light, exhibit design teams
must often lower light levels to preserve the objects.
Idea generators and idea implementers also become involved
in the design of floor space. They choose signature
objects to catch visitors’ attention and beckon them forward in
an exhibit. Placed in one section of an exhibit, signature
objects are large objects that can be seen from another part of
the exhibit. For example, a fire engine in the urban history
museum in my study and an Egyptian temple (complete, and
inside the gallery) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art are
examples of signature objects. Similarly, museum educators
become involved in the design of floor space. The educator at
the urban history museum noted that she always has to remind
the design team to leave a “gathering space” in exhibits
so she has a place where she can speak to a group of 20 to 40
students at a time.
Laws in some jurisdictions require that exhibits be accessible
to all visitors, regardless of their physical disabilities. For
example, to accommodate visitors in wheel chairs, exhibit
designers typically add ramps to exhibits that have sunken or
raised areas, ensure that visitors in wheelchairs have sufficient
clearance between objects, and make sure that they can read
labels from their sitting positions. Although not required by
law, many exhibit designers also include seating areas in
exhibits because older adults and young children need a
place to rest in the middle of an exhibit. The design team at
the urban history museum I studied also tested its exhibit with
people in wheelchairs to make sure that the accommodations
met the needs of these visitors.
Fixed architectural elements also affect the design of the
floor space. For example, one of the obstacles facing the
design team at the high technology museum in my study was
a stairwell in the middle of the exhibit (the stairs were not part
of the exhibit). It could not be moved, so designers had to
figure a way of incorporating it into the exhibit.
In addition to considering the floor space of the exhibit,
designers also consider traffic patterns in the museum
building. Some staffs place popular temporary exhibits at
the end of a hallway, subtly requiring that visitors walk by
permanent exhibits they might otherwise miss. Architect
Richard Meier designed the High Museum of Art in Atlanta
so that visitors could see nearly all the exhibits from the
atrium at the entrance. Based on this initial scan, visitors
can decide where to begin exploring.
Despite research into the traffic patterns of visitors in
museums, not all museum buildings are easily traversed.
Some museums try to compensate for a non-intuitive floor
plan with extra signage. But as one exhibit designer noted
in the brainstorming session of museum exhibit designers,
“even the best signage can’t fix a poorly designed museum.”
Another commented that wayfinding within a museum
has “little to with signs and maps. [It] has to do with
the layout of the building.”
Lessons for Web design
As museum exhibit designers have learned that physical
space is a key communication resource, so Web site de-
In addition to considering the floor
space of the exhibit, designers also
consider traffic patterns in the
museum building.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design Carliner
72 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
signers have learned that screen real estate is a key communication
resource. Consider:
r Because of the consistency of the Windows and
Macintosh interfaces, users expect to find certain
types of information at certain locations on the
screen, like the menus and button bars.
r Similarly, because of the patterns of eye movement,
users are more likely to see information placed in
certain areas of the screen than in others (Horton
1995).
r Because many users typically do not scroll down,
communicators have learned that they need to include
mechanisms for encouraging users to scroll
down and move forward to related pages (User Interface
Engineering 1998).
r As exhibit designers have learned that the physical
layout of a building constrains their ability to help
visitors effectively find their way through the museum,
so interface designers have learned that the
structure of the underlying code constrains their ability
to effectively design an interface. For example, a
poorly structured program often results in a confusing
menu. One software developer commented, “I
can usually look at an interface and tell you the underlying
structure of the data.”
Based on these observations and experiences, Web
designers might do the following:
r Consciously place information on the screen, making
sure that key information appears in places where
users are most likely to see it. Commercial sites have
already learned to place advertisements at the top of
a page and along the right margin to increase attention
to them. We haven’t developed similar conventions
for technical information. Perhaps we could
follow the example of cnn.com on its long stories,
and place a table of contents at the beginning of the
page. Or perhaps we can place summaries of key
points along the right margin.
r Create “signature objects.” The most likely signature
object for a Web site is exclusive content. The challenge
is most acute on commercial Web sites
(whether business-to-consumer or business-to-business),
because so many Web sites license content
from third parties who, in turn, license the same
content to other parties. Consider news. Many
sources suggest that that a news feed brings visitors
back to a site. But if the news feed to one site
comes from the same source feeding a competitive
Web site, that news is not a signature object. As museums
have learned, a copy of the “Mona Lisa” does
not have the same signature value as the original.
r Design for accessibility by people with disabilities.
The technical term for this type of design is universal
design because it is a strategy to provide access
to all. Many designers assume that adaptive equipment
and specialized software can handle many of
the challenges faced by persons with disabilities. For
example, large screens and specialized software can
increase the size of a display for people with visual
impairments. But such hardware and software do
not solve the problem of an inconsiderate design.
For example, consider the problems encountered by
a user of a Web site that relies heavily on audio
cues, and does not provide alternate presentations of
that data, such as transcriptions.
r Consider traffic patterns. On the one hand, designers
want to make sure that visitors notice the most important
or sought-after information on the Web site.
However, as museum designers place less-known
exhibits in the path of the sought-after ones to give
those less-known parts more exposure, so Web site
designers might place less-known content ahead of
the better known material as a means of introducing
visitors to other parts.
5. “MUSEUM EXHIBITS MUST CAPTURE
THE VISITOR’S CURIOSITY.”
What I observed in museums
The idea generators at each museum studied all agreed: at
the heart of a good museum exhibit is a good story. Like
stories in books or film,
museum exhibits must capture the visitor’s curiosity. . . .
Our attention is attracted by novel or unexplained stimuli—
a loud noise, a sudden bustling activity, a strange
animal, or a mysterious object. It is by appealing to this
universal propensity that museums can attract the psychic
energy of a visitor long enough so that a more
extensive interaction, perhaps leaning to learning, can
later take place. (Csikzentmihalyi and Hermanson
1995, pp. 36–37)
The recipe for successful storytelling in exhibits is the same
as that in literature: riveting plots and engaging characters.
To create riveting plots, museum exhibit designers
employ a number of standard storytelling techniques. One
of the most basic is making sure the exhibit has a distinct