Field Trip v.30

Last week, our class at IXDMA took a trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to speak with the behind-the-scenes teams of designers and fabricators that create the exhibits.

I love museums in general, and this one in particular. I can remember standing in the front entrance at the ticket counter gazing up at a T-Rex skeleton as a little kid, totally awestruck. Every trip to the museum was like entering into a new world. The artificial labyrinths that wound their way deeper into the museum, disorienting you, pulling you farther into the illusion. The skeletons and taxidermies, dead but still with some sort of presence, especially to the imagination of a child. Murals and displays that acted on your now-pliable senses, making it so easy to feel like you were standing in a Triassic swamp, waiting for an ankylosaur to come lumbering through the palms.

It was a really nice reminder of the power that good design has — your imagination is rarely captured now the way it was when you were a child. The flood of memories that came back to me was extremely welcome — I feel jaded and cynical a lot, and it was nice to remember that sense of mystery and wonder.

Once we made our way though the lobby and I was able to move past my Proust-like dislocation in time, we had a very enlightening discussion with the behind-the-scenes teams. It was very interesting to go through their design packages for upcoming projects — parking garage redesigns, signage examples, new exhibit placements. But what struck me the most was how committed they were to the experience of visitors.

There were no assumptions about how museum visitors would experience exhibits — everything was tested and analyzed. It was really nice to hear the passion that the designers spoke with — they really seemed to believe in the mission of education, and the possibility that trips to the museum held.

There were a lot of very interesting pragmatic details to the design process that we discussed, but overall, my main takeaway was how much everyone enjoyed their jobs. The people we spoke to had been there 10, 20, even 30 years. They talked about what it was like in the old days, when more exhibits were created in house. But whether they were talking about the past or the future, they were speaking about it passionately.

As I move forward in my career as an interaction designer, I’m going to keep this experience in mind. Having a strong purpose behind your work, something that really inspires you and motivates you, seems to have a bigger factor on staying someplace than anything else. I’m certainly going to try to embody that sense, somehow, in my work.