2

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.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design Carliner
74 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
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.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Carliner Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design
Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001 ² TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 75
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.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design Carliner
76 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
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.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Carliner Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design
Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001 ² TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 77
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.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design Carliner
78 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION ² Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001
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.
APPLIED RESEARCH
Carliner Lessons Learned from Museum Exhibit Design
Volume 48, Number 1, February 2001 ² TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 79
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