Modern Museums: Digital Experiences Within Exhibition Design
In an effort to re-invigorate the exhibition experience, designers have begun to incorporate opportunities for digital interactions within the gallery space. Their goal is to create more opportunities for visitors to develop independent and personal experiences. In exploring user-experiences in art settings, a wide variety of options have been applied: the American Museum of Natural History has developed an augmented reality app; the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum has introduced tabletop touchscreens; the IBM 100: Think exhibition has created feedback driven data projections. All of these interactions grant visitors an immersive and active gallery experience, which allows for the interactions and information to be more memorable. However, all of the technology-driven experiences require immense monetary resources to ensure seamless functionality. While introducing digital experiences in exhibitions can be costly and time sensitive, museums who do incorporate these digital-user experiences see an increase in personalized visitor experiences and in engagement following the visit.

When creating an exhibition, designers consider the 5Es Experience Model, developed by Conifer Research, as a tool to define each stage of the interaction. The 5Es stand for entice, enter, engage, exit and extend (Schwanback). By applying this model, designers are able to consider the stages in which to incorporate a digital interaction (See Fig.1). The most effective stages for introduction of technology are engage and extend. Within the engage stage, digital interactions provide opportunities for guidance, storytelling, teaching, and playing. These digital interactions deformalize the gallery space because visitors are able to partake in the exhibit, rather than just acting as silent observers (Rhodes). In order to create lasting impressions, digital experiences, such as websites, apps, and social media, can be introduced in the extend stage to prolong the visitor experience after they have left the physical space. This grants visitors the opportunity to either learn more or reflect and provide input on the experience.
American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) has incorporated digital experiences for museum visitors through augmented reality apps and a holistic online presence. Everyday experiences tend to revolve around technological interactions: a majority of learning, communicating, and engagement happens on digital platforms. Museums leverage this routine by transitioning digital experiences into exhibitions. At the AMNH, the Explorer app uses augmented reality as an extension of the current physical collection (See Fig. 2). Transporting the visitor into another perspective grants more opportunities for independent exploration and discovery. Visitors can create their own self-guided experience, which modifies the traditional academic approach to museum interactions. For example, these portals provide access to new content such as trivia games or navigational paths, which invites people to engage as participants, not just as passive customers (Simon ii). These additional layers of content offer more opportunity for participant led discovery, making each museum visit unique to the individual. The Explorer App re-invigorates the static exhibitions through an immersive, personalized experience.

In addition to the immersive Explorer app, the AMNH has also developed an online presence that allows interested parties to explore the museum digitally with Google Arts & Culture. This acts as a way to entice potential visitors and extend the experience for those who have already been to the museum. Similar to Google Street view, participants from around the world can explore the gallery spaces. From this expanded access, the AMNH can engage with audiences who might not be able to physically visit the museum. While users can navigate the space independently, the website also features guided VR tours that explain and direct them around the collection. While this technology brings the museum to viewers, curators understand that this falls into the entice category of the 5Es model, rather than the engage category. It is a tool to be used to leave viewers yearning to see the works in person (Stinson). By making large public spaces accessible online, the museum experience is able to be translated on a global scale and engage a broader audience.
While the Google Arts & Culture website increases accessibility to the AMNH, it also presents significant drawbacks to the museum going experience. The museum when viewed digitally is grand, yet empty. This is an unusual sight and removes the communal aspect of the large, public education space. In the book Reinventing the Museum: Historical and Contemporary perspectives on the Paradigm Shift, Gail Anderson, a museum programing strategist, recognizes the evolution of the gallery space from an “ivory tower of exclusivity” toward “a more socially responsive cultural institution in service to the public” (Anderson 1). Technology aids in this evolution, granting accessibility regardless of location. However, the digital realm has not yet incorporated the discussion and communication interaction that are vital to the exhibition experience.
Cooper Hewitt Museum
The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City houses a collection of industrial design, graphic design, architecture, and digital design projects. Recently re-designed by Pentagram and Local Projects, the goal is to infuse the space with technology in order to mirror contemporary design processes. In approaching the new user experience Jake Barton, the Principal and Founder of Local Projects, described visitors as “curious, open, interested, and engaging. They want to express themselves and see their own identity refracted through the museum’s” (Rhodes). Understanding that museum goers want to be active participants and not passive viewers benefits the overall experience. Digital interactions foster personal experiences, making the gallery more impressionable and memorable.
The largest piece of technology incorporated at the Cooper Hewitt is the Pen, which each visitor receives upon entering the museum. The tool, shaped like a large black marker, enables participants to draw on touch screens, collect their favorite pieces, and learn as a practicing designer (See Fig. 3). This digital experience elevates individual contributions through the creation of original work housed in a museum. Beyond that, it enables visitors to make personal connections with the work on display, encouraging them to think about an object’s purpose in context (Simon 143). In conjunction with the Pen, large scale touch screen monitor gives viewers to ability to act as designers and learn the process of design. One of these table-top interactive screens grants visitors the opportunity to draw a line and have the system find an object with a similar characteristic. Another screen projects participants creations onto the wall, creating an ever editable digital wallpaper. Aside from individual contributions, the large touch screens encourage collaboration and dialogue because multiple people are participating at once. This collective experience allows for moments of unexpected discovery and connections between the objects in the connections and the visitors themselves. The introduction of the Pen enabled the Cooper Hewitt to make the viewers experiences more active in the exhibition environment.
Considering the Extend category of the 5Es Model, the Pen bridges the gap between the collection and the user, allowing for a personalized experience. The user acts as a curator, selecting their own collection of works based on their individual preferences. Upon leaving the museum, each guest is encouraged to look at their collection online and continue to explore. The interactive website offers more information on the designers and time period, as well as similar works to discover. In this way, the Pen also acts as a tool to extend the museum experience to a digital platform after the visitor has left the physical space (Adona). The data recorded from the Pen, such as length of time in the museum and number of objects collected, enable the Cooper Hewitt to develop and update their digital programs to better the user experience.
Similar to the AMNH, the Cooper Hewitt has taken steps to create a larger online presence to make their collection more accessible. Currently, every artifact in the collection can be viewed on the museum’s website, including those in storage that are not currently on display. This grants a larger audience access to objects, designers, and context for free anytime and anywhere. Traditional museums are gathering places for public learning, so the online collection is a natural digital extension of this role. People are able to assume the role of curator and anthropologist through more thorough inspection of objects, through simple features such as zoom (Bertacchini). This is an interaction that is not possible within the physical space for everyday museum goers, and provides a more immersive interaction. The Pen also connects to the online collection, where visitors can create a profile and keep their own collection of objects pulled from both their physical visit and extend experience on the web.
Despite the success of the Pen within the physical space, the Cooper Hewitt faces challenges in maintaining the digital presence within the galleries. The programming of the devices is tedious and time consuming, often designers are planning for technology that does not exist yet. Participants are constantly expecting new interactions and new experiences because digital work is eternally malleable. In order to combat these challenges, the Cooper Hewitt has developed cross disciplinary departments between education, curation and digital. Head curator Ellen Lupton introduced the concept of service design, which involves “analyzing the user’s interactions with a product or institution to create memorable and humane experiences” (Kennedy). By working with digital applications in mind, the Cooper Hewitt is able to create relevant and progressive interactions that are impactful for the participants. They are able to analyze interactions and improve them to create seamless user-centric experiences.
IBM 100: THINK Exhibition
In the fall of 2011, IBM developed the THINK Exhibit to celebrate their centennial anniversary. The goal of the exhibition was to communicate the progress over the last century by IBM, focusing on how technological advancements have impacted our culture and society. A natural solution for IBM was translating and visualizing data into digestible viewer interactions. The exhibition featured three unique experiences: a data wall, an immersive film, and interactive stations. While each experience provides a different interaction, the overall outcome is to champion the pattern of progress, which is defined by IBM as “seeing how our world behaves, mapping what we find, understanding causes and effects, believing we can create new outcomes, and acting to design, build and improve the systems around us” (IBM). This process is mimicked within the exhibition, allowing digital experiences to transform people into active participants rather than passive viewers. By ending with a call to action, the exhibition extends the experience, encouraging visitors to enact change within their own worlds to create progress.

The THINK exhibition used immersive technology and real-time data to entice viewers through an exterior LCD screen referred to as the data wall. The data wall projects information from the surrounding area, providing information on traffic patterns, waterflow in reservoirs, solar energy, credit card transactions (See Fig. 4). These monotonous, routine tasks are elevated via the digital experience. The goal of an exhibition is to provide a public learning experience, where content can be simplified and clarified, but not “dumbed-down for the least common denominator”(Savage-Yamazaki). Following the 5 Es Model, the screen entices passersby through its visual interpretation of data points as beautiful, animated vector infographics. This experience, while visually engaging, does not provide opportunity for direct user interaction, thus making it more a tool of enticement and wonder. As the first interaction for the viewer, it is informational and less explorative, but still creates a sense of curiosity. Because of this, the data wall prompts viewers to explore the rest of the exhibition, where they can directly engage with the content they just observed.
Within the exhibition, the digital experience continues with 40 digital panels which alternate between a fourteen minute immersive film and interactive workstations (See Fig. 5). Because the exhibition is confined to one room, a completely captivating sensory experience can be created. Because of the positioning of the panels and the cross screen interactions, participants are completely enveloped and encircled by the film, placing them inside the story. According to Anderson, “intense sensory perception combining sight, sound and motion, environments in which visitors can immerse themselves rather than behave merely as spectator, and out of the ordinary stimuli and effects make museum visits unique and memorable” (Anderson 173). The panels activate both concepts; the video engages the audience through sound and motion, while the interactive touch screens enable the visitor to become an active participant in the exhibit. The interactive workstations enable people to navigate the content on their own and create their own narrative. Participants can also leave their impression on the exhibit as a whole through guided responses. This creates a sense of dialogue, which develops a community atmosphere and can be both provocative and conversational. For IBM, the ability to provide feedback humanizes the tech-centric exhibition, making the information more impressionable.
Small scale temporary exhibitions, such as the THINK exhibit, face different challenges than museums who incorporate permanent digital experiences. Enticing viewers is more difficult because the space where the information is being displayed is not a predictable environment. Promotion and impactful first interactions define the visitor experience, and seamless digital experiences provide that. While IBM has the advantage of being a leader in technology, other temporary installations are faced with budget and time constraints that could lessen the success of the installation. Another challenge to overcome is obtaining participant responses. Traditionally, museums are expected to act as an educational tool, acting as the supplier of information to the public. However, new digital exhibition philosophy argues that “two-way communication with the public creates a more responsive interchange of ideas” (Anderson 6). Visitors must develop new patterns of interaction where they have the ability to respond, change and impact the exhibition. Both digital interactions put pressure on the viewer that did not exist in the traditional museum model and present challenges for designers and curators.
Digital-user experiences within the exhibition space enhance viewer experiences by creating personalized interactions, takeaway engagement opportunities, and expanded online applications. Audience expectations rely on interactive and digital experiences as an extension of daily technological interactions. These new digital interactions create individual experiences as well as platforms for community and collaboration. Museums who emphasize the entice, engage and extend phases of the 5 E’s Model are able to transform visitors into active participants rather than passive consumers. Rather than re-design their existing space, the American Museum of Natural History incorporated an immersive app and online presence to reinvigorate interactions. The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum incorporated the Pen into the space to grant viewers the opportunity to act as a designer and curator. IBM used digital workstations as an opportunity to inform and gather personal responses in an immersive sensory installation. As museums continue to introduce technology in exhibitions, they are creating more memorable and personalized interactions for the public.
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