I recently had the opportunity to travel to Alaska with several other members of our team for a meeting with a client. While there, we traveled throughout the state visiting visitor centers, nature centers, themed resorts, and museums like the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Since we were working, one of our goals was to critique and document what these facilities were interpreting in order to avoid duplicating that information within our design project.

As I always do, I started looking at materials used and quality of the work. I looked to see if the exhibits themselves were designed in a way that lead the visitor through the gallery. I asked myself, “do the exhibits have a visual hierarchy that helped organize the information?” What I found myself doing after we had visited a few places, however, was completely turning my ‘quality control’ critical eye off and simply walking through the exhibits.

I was drawn to the large animal models or large visuals. I found myself wanting to just look at them and as you can see take selfies to send to friends and family. I looked for photo opportunities and was drawn to what was large and cool. I wasn’t looking to learn anything, I simply wanted to see cool stuff and have fun. You know the interesting thing that happened from that was I actually ended up learning more than I would have had I gone into that exhibit with the intention of learning. After seeing myself next to that large bear or moose, I realized how huge they were. I wanted to know how big they get.  Then how much they weighed. I wanted to know what they ate and where they could be found.

So what’s my point? You have to look at how visitors interact with exhibits and what will inspire them to learn. You have to understand that something as simple as a large taxidermy bear or even a large image can lead a person to greater interest into that item or subject. That you don’t need to spoon feed visitors but instead inspire them. Whether they get the information at the museum or come home and look it up online it doesn’t matter. You’ve inspired that person to learn more about that subject and that’s pretty awesome.

I’m curious, how have you approached the content at your site? Do you spell out every instruction or do you incorporate large wow factors to inspire visitors to explore the subject further on their own? How does it work for you?