Tuesday, March 27, 2007
museum of natural history
We visited the Museum of Natural History on 81st St. and Central Park West last week during the trip to New York. The intent was to see how the museum was designed. As it turns out, if one starts on the top floor and works a way around and down, the museum progresses through the evolutionary chain, to a point -- a very cool concept. Implementation of this concept leaves a little to be desired. No one was following the design. No one. There was no signage to direct people to the orientation center on the 4th floor (we entered from the lower level). One you arrived at the fourth floor, if you go to the right (as most people tend to do) you go the wrong way. Users had to realize that going into the Orientation center (to the left) was the appropriate choice, but the majority of folks during our visit were moving against this design. Maybe they were just there to see the pretty dinosaur bones.
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I visited that museum years ago. I really can't remember how I did. It is quite interesting as the way you described it. I will relate it to user experience design again. It seems to me that it is not a quite success story of experience design though I have no doubt that the designer intended to create that experience. The designer won the bid and the idea was adopted because it was unusual. However, it is not very intuitive. The designer failed to persuade the museum manager to display the design in the way it was created. What about the idea of linking the entrance to the elevator that takes people directly to the fourth floor? I think a good user experience design should be a natural and spontaneous response from the user or a more logical way to lead users to respond to the design or product the way the designer expected the users to respond. The museum apparently is attracting people by the dinosour bones, the same as the Field Museum in Chicago. The dinosour bones could be a good selling point. I would display it the way the Louve Musee handles the Mona Lisa---visitors have to go through the entire museum to find it.
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