Do your exhibition or product planning meetings sound like this? “Here’s where the interactive touch table will go!” “If there’s a word count limit for the labels, we’ll just put that extra content on the website.” “We can't be left behind. Let’s incorporate VR.” “The digital experience will be engaging AND participatory.”
If you’ve already affected a sea change in your organization to squash these crimes against digital and experience design, please adopt us. (Or come and share your own strategies!) But if you’re still pushing the boulder up the hill, struggling with leadership (or even peers) who don’t seem to recognize their own prescriptive and restrictive specificity or that their objectives are just a bunch of unclear, amorphous buzzwords, this is your session!
It’s hard to find a common language sometimes, but it is possible. We will share some useful metaphors and examples that have helped us build inclusive conversations across departments with everyone from researchers and writers, to communications and marketing departments, all the way up to executive leadership. We will share questions and categories we’ve used to ensure experience goals are treated with just as much care and consideration as content-fueled learning goals and vice-versa.
…attend and participate in early project or exhibition planning meetings with new tools and vocabulary to better advocate for the integration of meaningful digital learning experiences, not just shiny ones.
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Alison Koch
Digital Content Producer
Playwrights Horizons
@alisonsigns
Anjuli Maniam
Director of Exhibition Media
National September 11 Memorial & Museum
@ororo_m
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What do you mean “We don’t
have an interpretive plan”?!
What is this the story of?
What do you want visitors to feel?
What should the visitor walk away thinking about?
What are you trying to achieve?
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Dramaturg
dram·a·turg
/ˈdraməˌtərɡ,ˈdraməˌtərj/
n.
1. A writer or adapter of plays; a playwright.
2. A person who is employed by a theatrical
or opera company to assist in researching,
selecting, adapting, or interpreting scripts or
libretti.
A digiturg?! A dramacorn?!
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Why don’t you speak unicorn?
Nothing we’re presenting today
has proven 100% successful, but
these tools have helped us move
the conversation with our
colleagues in a positive direction.
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Interpretive Planning Toolkit:
1. Creative Brief (Establish Objectives)
2. Content vs. Story (Articulate Themes)
3. Meaningful Organizing Principles (Hierarchy)
4. Medium vs. Message (Learning and Experience Goals)
5. Visualizations (Concept Diagrams)
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Write it Down!
What is a creative brief good for?
● When you’re approached with a WHAT with no clear WHY.
● When you need to translate assumptions into requirements.
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Try a metaphor!
When can borrowing from other storytelling
mediums be helpful?
● When you have to find a path from the head to the heart.
● When you need an organizing or clarifying purpose.
● When you can’t articulate what your audience should feel.
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Facilitate a group activity!
When can an activity help create meaningful
organizing principles?
● When you lack a hierarchy of information.
● When everything is important.
● When your audience is everyone.
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Visitor Mapping
PERSONA 2:
ASL: 40yo, female, domestic (tristate area)
Motivation: I am shocked that the Museum would give this terrorist more exhibition
space.
Emotion: Angry, indignation, seeking to prove the inappropriateness of the exhibition.
Description from survey: Our evaluation work revealed that many visitors have strong
emotional responses to the idea of expanded content about Osama bin Laden being
featured in the 9/11 Memorial Museum. Some visitors feel strongly that featuring
information about terrorists conflicts with our mission as a memorial institution, while
others express high interest in aspects of the story that may be too graphic for our
space, specifically noting interest in the physical fact of bin Laden’s death.
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Make a chart!
When is being overly explanatory necessary?
● When people can’t separate the message from the medium.
● When you need to build digital production literacy.
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Categories
Evidential / Artifact Guide Highlight Environmental
Supports the narrative Supports the visitor’s
journey through the
exhibition
Supports a specific
asset or plot point
Supports the visitor’s
experience of the exhibition
Ex:
Archival video/audio
Ex:
Check-ins, chapter
markers, audio guide
Ex:
AR layer, pre-produced
linear documentary
content
Ex:
Projection mapping,
immersive AV, soundscape
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When words fail,
make an infographic...
When should you use infographics?
● When you need to show a lot of info in a snapshot.
● When you have visual learners or people who love to redline docs.
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A unicorn walks into a
meeting...
VR experience at a historically significant site
In-gallery interactive for a jellyfish exhibition at an aquarium
Last-minute online interpretation to address a relevant and newsy “current event”
A mobile app for a natural history museum
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Things to consider
What questions need to be answered?
What are the red flags?
What tools can you use to get the answers or consensus you need?
