Interactives: Thing of the Past?

Are interactives at museums about to become relics themselves?

Reading Dan Spock's "A Post-Coronavirus Museum," it hit me that interactive activities at museums and science centers may quickly become a thing of the past.

As COVID-19 started to spread through the U.S., museums began talking about temporarily removing their interactives. No more touchy stations for kids, no more equipment for them to climb on, but just for now, as a precaution. At the museum I was working at, there was discussion about putting hand sanitizer stations in the room of touch-screen interactives, rather than completely closing off the room.

But it's now five months later, and "for now" and "temporarily" are still going. Many museums are currently closed, so their interactives are a moot point for the moment, but at some point, they will reopen (Won't they?), and there will need to be discussions about all of those hands-on activities for kids and adults.

Spock states: "One museum I’m aware of is already discussing plans to pull all interactive activities from its exhibits in anticipation of reopening," and refers to "the idea that children’s and other museums might ... revert to static displays like the ones I grew up with five decades ago."

Wow. That idea of possibly getting rid of all interactives is just... wow. How much time have museum professionals -- exhibit designers, curators, education departments -- spent researching interactives and thinking of how to incorporate them into each museum? How much time have we spent thinking how a physical activity could be integrated into the theme of our museums or science centers -- hammering away to build a railroad, pushing buttons to create tides, spinning a knob to make a sign light up, touching a screen to make your choice in a game, using building blocks to construct a bridge or high-rise, touching a plasma ball to see electricity and how it's conducted -- especially as a way to help a visitor make a connection with what they're learning? As far as I know, interactives are still a relatively new thing (booming within the last 10-20 years), and now we're having to either rethink what an "interactive" could/should be, or get rid of them altogether? How much time have we invested in these aspects of museums and learning, and now they may have to become obsolete?? That realization blew my mind.

If we can't touch things, or should be touching many fewer things, what will "interactives" look like in the post-Coronavirus world? How will those multi-sensory and tactile goals be accomplished? Will everything be virtual reality? For me, one of the great things about most interactives was that they forced you to look at something in the real world, and to get physically involved, rather than staring at a screen, as if you were at home watching TV or streaming movies online. It can be argued that some virtual reality activities require involvement, but there are others that are "Sit there, put on this headset, and watch this," much like the "Stand there, look at that wall, and read this" of gallery spaces.

On the other hand, in episode #79 of the "Museum Archipelago" podcast, exhibit designer Paul Orselli lists a number of other options, like interactive touch screens or projection systems that are activated and controlled by foot, rather than by hand, allowing social interactions while being socially distanced. "[It's] sort of full-body and it doesn't involve people touching their hands."

He describes what he calls "empty interaction," such as "a flip label [with] one piece of text and information on a little flap or a door, and to encounter the rest of the information, or to get an answer to a question, you have to open up the flap," as well as push-button interactives. Those are certainly easy interactives (and kind of fun, with that moment of "Here's my guess. Did I get it right? Let's see!" and "What's going to happen when I push this?"), but as Orselli laughs, "That might be about the lowest level of interaction possible." He then asks whether there's a way to create a more intellectually engaging version of a flip label.

Orselli says that possibly having to get rid of these simple interactives could be a good thing, forcing us to ask ourselves, "How could we provide a satisfying experience, and what are the interfaces or other kinds of opportunities that we could provide that would carry the content, would carry the emotional ideas that we want to carry across?" As Orselli concludes, "Constraints are a good thing for creativity, and now we've just been thrown some public health and perceptual constraints. We have to think about that because certainly our visitors are going to be thinking about that, and if we don't show that at least we're sensitive to that, our visitors could rightfully think that we are insensitive not only to those design constraints and those design considerations, but insensitive to them as people who want to have fun and want to be safe." This gives us new things to think about, new approaches to interactions for our visitors, new ways of learning. It's going to be a whole new world.

Someday (maybe soon), is there going to be a Museum of Interactives? Lots of old flip panels, push buttons, and hammering toys, all sitting on shelves? We'll visit with our kids or grandkids, they'll then visit with their kids, and say "Back in the 2010s, there were things called interactives. You had to do stuff with your hands to make them work. Look at that old technology!"

Oral History Detective

(Note: a version of this originally appeared on the blog I wrote for the historical association I volunteered at long ago, so I never put it on my own blog. However, I was pretty proud of it, and it was one of the “A-ha!” moments I was most proud of, so I’m revising the post and putting it here.)

In April 2014, I was working on transcribing a 2009 oral history interview with a woman I’ll call JAR. In JAR’s interview, she mentions a class picture she brought in to donate to the historical association*. As I was transcribing the interview, I thought of all the boxes we had in our collections room -- boxes not yet processed, boxes not properly processed, boxes processed but lost -- and wondered where in the world that picture might be, where it could have been put in the past five years. I thought about all the different class pictures we had -- all the many, many class pictures we had -- and I thought about how much I’d love to find the picture and include it with the interview transcript on-site, as well as use it as a visual aid on the web version of the transcript. Now, if only I could find that picture…

The next time I was working on organizing our collections and entering them into our database, I reminded myself I needed to find that picture. I had been planning how to try to find it: I could search our database for JAR’s name, to see if it was donated under her name (But was it an actual donation? And was it donated in her name? Would she have donated it under her maiden name or her married name? And would her name have been recorded as JAR or as J A R [Think about half the duo who played Michelle Tanner on Full House: would the cataloger have recorded her name as Mary Kate, or properly as Mary-Kate?]?); I could search our database by the school name (But everyone seemed to have a different way of calling the school, so was it cataloged as “Alderwood School,” “Alderwood Grade School,” “Alderwood Manor School,”…?); I could search by the grade level or year (But was that information included with the picture when it was cataloged? And did she say what grade/year it was in the interview?). So I had a few possible routes to search, but wasn’t sure any of them would lead to results. I was already disheartened without even starting my search!

As I was working in our database, reminding myself of all the ways I wanted to look for the picture, thinking of all the potential roadblocks, and reminding myself of the names JAR had mentioned as being in the picture (KS, MS, AN), I just happened to go through our collection of class photos, completely unrelated to looking for that picture. And then… there… My eye was caught by the name MS. “Wait!” I thought to myself. “Could it be… ?” Then I saw KS’s name listed with that same picture. “Could it…?” And then AN’s name! “No… This is too good to be true!” But there it was: a class picture, third grade, 1941-1942.

It was a beautiful, glorious moment. The clouds parted, the sun came out (Okay, I was in the basement of our building, so I don’t really know if the clouds parted and the sun came out), angels sang! “I think I’ve found it!”

The true test, though, was something that I hadn’t planned on looking for, but that popped into my head as I was investigating this picture: JAR had mentioned a little boy with holes in the knees of his pants. I checked the front row, like I remember JAR saying in her interview, and squinted hard. Sure enough, front and center, there’s a little boy with what looks to be a hole in the knee of his pants. Eureka! I’d found the picture!

Doing the history of a place from before you were there is always tricky. No matter how much studying you’ve done on the subject, you’re at some amount of a disadvantage not having lived through it first hand. For this particular organization, I was seen as a newcomer, being much younger than everyone else and living in the city after it incorporated so many other nearby parts, rather than coming from one of those country parts that was incorporated. As a result, I didn’t know a lot of the history and people that our members all seemed to know, and a lot of my knowledge about the area’s past came from research: reading books, listening to others, transcribing oral histories, entering donations. Because I didn’t have that first-hand knowledge, I wouldn’t have automatically known that this picture was JAR’s class, or known by looking at the faces that these were the same kids she was talking about. So when I could research (or, to some extent, just get lucky) and find something specific to a project, or to a story I’d heard, it was a huge deal for me. And when I miraculously found the exact picture that someone referred to in an interview, and when I stumbled over that picture without even searching for it, that’s one of those Eureka moments I just love!

2010.FIC.059A

*Because I find it so charming, here are the relevant passages of the oral history:

JAR: But you know, I do have a picture here, a photograph of our third grade. A lot of kids in this class, and there are at least nine now that are still alive and come to our school reunions or to special events here... . And these boys, like for instance, well, KS, I’ve known him since the first or second grade. ... and then there’s AN. I see AN, who is in business still to this day, at an automotive agency. And of course MS, who was my friend. And MS2; her mother was a teacher at Alderwood Grade School. And she’s also in this picture. Just cute kids. RD, ... and she just lives down the street from me, believe it or not. I didn’t know it for a long time. And then there’s AS. Now, these people I see at various events, and I’m sure that there are many others, too, but I haven’t—I’ve lost contact with them. But this picture is wonderful, and I want you to have a copy of this to show with this interview, because the children all look—they’re so innocent [laughs], and they’re so cute. They’re in third grade. Some of the boys are kind of hamming it up, and mimicking, and doing little things. And the girls just sit there and smile, with their hands folded. It’s just priceless.

CR: Very innocent time.

JAR: Very innocent time.
CR: Did you have a different feel for when you moved in to the city and had to go to the city school—
JAR: Oh, yes—
CR: —after you’d gone to the country school for so long?
JAR: Oh, yes. I remember sometimes kids would come to school here in Alderwood in bare feet. I remember one time the principal sent them home, probably for their own safety, you know. But they would— There they were. If you look at this picture, you’ll see a little boy here in the front row, and his pants, he’s got holes in his knees. His pants are kind of torn, you know. And it’s just— It’s a whole different time, and a whole different lifestyle. When I went in to northern Seattle, everybody was dressed, dressed well. It was a more serious life there. More organized. Out here, it was just free.