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Top 10 Tips to Great Museum Exhibit Design
August 31, 2009 by Maria Lorena Lehman
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Image: baboon™ | Flickr
Image: baboon™ | Flickr
DESIGNING A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE
When it’s a great experience, going to a museum can teach us, delight us and inspire us; however, a lot of effort goes into a museum exhibit design. As architects, we can learn a lot by understanding the ingredients that make such designs so successful. It’s not as simple as you might think.
A museum is constantly looking for different ways to attract visitors, but what happens once they get there? Often they suffer from three main problems — they can’t find a specific piece of information, they must leave too soon because they are bored or they stay a long time but miss key lessons from the main exhibits. (1)
Obviously, visitor accessibility and attention are paramount, but that’s not all it takes to design for a great museum experience.
WHAT MUSEUMS MUST DO
The following are 10 ingredients for successful museum exhibit design:
Motivate Visitors:
Target an audience — the general public and/or specific communities (1)
Focus Content:
Filter content so visitors are not bombarded with information overload (1)
Immersion:
Engage visitors within a “story” (1)
Modularity:
Present smaller themes instead of one larger complex topic (1)
Skimmability:
Information should be easy to take in because visitors are often standing and/or have different levels of education (1)
Patterns:
Incorporate traffic/circulation patterns, exhibit sequence patterns and pre-existing framework patterns (architectural elements) (1)
Capture Curiosity:
Use storytelling techniques to engage visitors (1)
Interaction:
Give visitors a “fun” experience by tapping into their emotion (1)
Integrate Technology:
Technology should enhance visitor’s experience, not detract from it (1)
Layer Content:
Present information in a hierarchical manner (1)