¡Escuchar! Team Clemente Takes a Moment to Listen
“¡Escuchar!” means to listen in Spanish.
The Clemente Museum, as we’ve described before, is a physical testament to legacy. Its crimson brick, garnished in green vines, is matched only by the bright red firehouse door, welcoming in visitors. A few short months ago when several members of our team entered the museum for the first time, we contemplated the hundreds (if not thousands) of patrons who had walked through that same red firehouse door.
Our question was simple: “What was their experience like?” We wanted to speak to them, hear their stories, and see if they were filled with the same awe that struck us.
Fast forward to today and that’s exactly what we’ve done.
Clemente Patron Interviews
Our team put together a survey form asking patrons signed up for the monthly museum newsletter to volunteer an hour of their time to talk to a couple of CMU grad students. We wanted to know what their motivations were for visiting the museum and how it compared to their expectations.
As you can imagine, a vast majority of the responses we got were from die-hard baseball and Clemente fans. Boy, did we get a response. 30 past visitors responded to our quick survey, more than we could even interview. If that doesn’t show the heart that people have for this one Pittsburgh building, we don’t know what else will. Over the course of two weeks, we selected interesting patrons, scheduled one-hour slots with them, and performed the actual interviews.
You might be wondering: “What kind of person were we looking to interview?”
The simple answer is a wide range of people, various ages and various levels of previous knowledge of Roberto Clemente. In particular, we were very curious how visitors who happened upon the museum by chance came to love Clemente’s life story (so much so that they signed up for a newsletter about it!).
Clemente Patron Findings
Several recurring themes kept coming up across almost all of our interviews, the most common being Clemente’s baseball skills. Now, this didn’t surprise us. However, we noticed that when people talked about Roberto Clemente’s athleticism, they didn’t mention stats or baseball cards (though everyone loved a good baseball card). They focused on how his sports achievements were great in the context of racial barriers he broke. Not only was Clemente the 11th person in history to reach 3,000 career hits, he was also the first Hispanic player to do so.
Patrons saw him as an inspiration, proclaiming that “He was from the same place, he shares the heritage. He looks like me.” Clemente truly left behind a wave of inspiration for Latinos after his trailblazing career.
Proud, but humble.
This phrase came up during our interviews, an attempt to encapsulate the boldness with which Roberto Clemente embraced his Puerto Rican culture along with his constant attitude of prioritizing others above himself.
When people left the museum, they didn’t remember every artifact or story. What they remembered was how a baseball player from the 50’s connected to their lives today.
They loved the stories about his wife, how Clemente wooed her and honored her father by being faithful and asking for her hand in marriage. They remember the island of Puerto Rico buzzing with mutual excitement as Clemente reached 2,998 hits, then 2,999, and the complete celebration at 3,000.
It became more than the artifacts. It was the moments shared with family at the museum or the moments that it took visitors back to their own childhood memories. Roberto Clemente’s story became part of their own stories.
Social Pretotyping
In parallel to our work with museum patrons, we also designed and began testing a pretotype to investigate sociality in a museum-like context. In our initial interviews with museum-goers, we found that nearly all our participants went to museums with friends or family members — and out of that group, everyone enjoyed going through museums with other people, even if the exhibitions were designed to be solitary. Having the opportunity to absorb the material at the museum, and then discussing or sharing what they found with others seemed to engage museum patrons. This discourse was suggested to offer a deeper and more reflective experience than if they had ventured alone.
We also took particular interest in the potential for exhibitions and experiences that are co-created by participants, such as the Museum of Broken Relationships, which features artifacts and stories donated by everyday people. We were also interested to explore if there was potential for social interaction among strangers, which is not typical in a museum experience.
As a result of these observations, our team set out to see if there were ways we could bring aspects of the social connection that occurs in a physical museum in a virtual experience. To that end, we devised a pretotype that mimics a “pin-up reflection board.” Through Google Slides, we created a virtual exhibit walkthrough experience, where participants would watch three videos by Storycorps that featured stories of everyday people. After each video, they would be presented with a “reflection board” which had text, images and audio recordings left behind by other participants. Participants could add to the board if they wished.
Social Pretotype Findings
Through the semi-structured interviews that happened after the activity, we found that observing other people’s thoughts and reflections amplifies the emotion. It also made them more reflective and contemplative. Another finding was that seeing multiple types and methods of reflections made it more likely for a person to share their own experience.
A recurring theme our team observed was that people wanted to leave comments if they personally related to the story. Such comments often acted as a good segue into more conversation about the topic with friends.
While this activity is still in progress, it has thus far revealed that people do desire some social connection with others, especially friends, even in a virtual setting. The next steps would include exploring how to provide a platform that allows for these social interactions and discussions in a virtual Clemente museum experience.
This past sprint has been just that: a sprint. With the multitude of research activities we’re running in parallel, we’re exploring both what is the Clemente Museum and what it can be. In the coming weeks, we’re excited to consolidate these findings and begin synthesizing insights that will inform the first inklings of a design vision. That vision will draw upon our museum visitors, Minecraft pretotype, expert interviews, Clemente patron interviews, social pretotype, and so much more. In the meantime, we’re happy to take a second, step back, and give you a quick look at our progress. But we can’t stay long. There’s so much more out there to explore.
Until next time,
Team Clemente
