Are Interactives Being Added to Exhibits for the Right Reasons?

Wednesday, September 2, 2015 6:41 PM by Betty Brennan in Design and Planning


“We want lots of interactives in our new exhibits.” “Can you design more interactives in to the exhibit?” “We want technology.” These are the types of statements we hear quite often while designing exhibits. I don’t want to give the impression that I am against all interactives, but often interactives are added to exhibits for the wrong reasons and without consideration of the long term costs.

What are some of the wrong reasons for emphasizing interactives?

Additional interactives increases our visitor engagement.

Is this really true? The next time you’re at an exhibit watch the “engagement”. There are exceptions, but most of the time you will see adults spending a minimum amount of time in front of an interactive before they walk away looking confused or bored. You’ll see children running from interactive to interactive totally “engaged” with mashing buttons. Activity is not the same as engaged learning.

Interactives are entertaining.

Is this really true? Maybe, but can you afford “entertaining”? How does your budget for interactives compare to Disney World’s? How does it compare to the development budget for the newest Xbox game? How about your local Dave and Busters? This is what you are competing against and without comparable budgets you are going to fail.

So am I arguing that including interactives is always a bad decision? Not at all. But the only good reason may be:

We want to interpret a specific concept (wing design, bite strength, gravity, etc.) that we believe can be made more memorable with an interactive.

If that is true you still have to answer a couple more questions:

  1. Do you have the future resources (funds, skills) to maintain your interactives? Interactives will be abused. Exhibits will break. What is your plan to fix them immediately? If you don’t have maintenance budgets and manpower to repair interactives quickly, “out of order” interactives will detract from, not enhance the visitor’s experience. For more on the debate, check out this article on ASTC. Do you have the resources to update your interactives? Technology changes rapidly. Ten year old technology will be laughed at by your young visitors. That does not enhance your visitor’s experience.

  2. Even if you can answer yes to the first two questions, what is the opportunity cost of the interactives you want? Could the funds for the interactives be used to create a more impactful exhibit in some other way? What is a typical eight year old more likely to remember: a touchscreen or a life size mammoth?

During exhibit design and fabrication, I hope these questions will help you to only include interactives that serve a purpose, and that can be kept operational and up to date to enhance your visitors overall experience. Let me know if you agree or disagree with any of my opinions.

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