One of my tasks is writing summaries of breaking science news stories. Fossilized fleas, malaria tests inspired by origami, the latest breakthrough in solar energy—all explained in 50 words at most. So it’s natural that I can’t get the Flame Challenge out of my head. It’s ingeniously simple: explain what’s happening inside a flame in a way that satisfies scientists—and intrigues 11-year-olds.

Alan Alda devised the challenge during the years he hosted the television show Scientific American Frontiers. He recently posed it to the readership of Science magazine. And the World Science Festival upped the ante by offering VIP Festival tickets the Flame Challenge winner (and yes, submissions will be read by real scientists and real 11-year-olds).

So if you’ve wanted to try exhibit development, this is the perfect time to do it. Just be prepared to get out the cardboard and duct tape (and a fire extinguisher) if you want to try getting people engaged in an activity—the other half of doing this job.

–Katherine

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Imagine you have to explain puberty to a kid. But you have to write it down in advance, so you don’t get to listen or see any body language. And wait–it’s not just one kid. It’s thousands. And you’re not just speaking for  yourself, but an institution you care about.

You can probably imagine why I procrastinated over writing about puberty for the Being Human exhibit. The topic was embarrassing, and my attempts to explain it were worse.

That’s where I stayed stuck until I realized I was trying to do the wrong job. The science centre isn’t a place that would ”explain puberty to a kid.” I had to find a way to include information about puberty without acting like the expert.

I considered trying a pilot (mocking up a version of the exhibit for people to try–our usual way of figuring out what to do), but pilots show how people react to an activity. I needed to know what people thought was important. I needed to crowdsource.

Crowdsourcing can mean a lot of things. The website Kiva.org crowdsources philanthropy by connecting people who are willing to lend money with aspiring entrepreneurs in developing countries. Threadless.com solicits t-shirt designs from users and sells the ones that get the most votes. Then there’s wikipedia. [All of these examples are from Jeff Howe’s book Crowdsourcing, which goes into way more detail than I can here.]

I decided to keep it simple. Being Human was scheduled to be the focus of the next Market Collective, so I made a big sign reading, “what should everyone know about being a teen?” and put out a thick stack of cards suggesting topics (zits, hair, hygiene, voice changing, hard-ons, periods, hormones and crushes–somehow I forgot to include breasts) along with straight pins so people could stick them on the wall.

The resulting notes were insightful, emotional, practical and funny. Here’s how we used them in the final graphic describing puberty for guys (there’s another for girls):

We also added a projector to the puberty area in Being Human and scanned the rest of the cards to make a slideshow.

Piloting and crowdsourcing have a lot in common. They tap into visitors’ knowledge and ideas. If you keep it simple they don’t require much time or money. They do require humility.

The differences are important. Piloting is all about how. How do people react? How does the exhibit work (or not)? How could it be improved? Crowdsourcing is better at what. What do people care about? What perspectives have you missed?

Knowing what question you’re trying to answer determines how to proceed. To pilot, mock up the final exhibit experience. When you’re crowdsourcing it’s often better not to approximate the final exhibit. When people perceive themselves as making an exhibit, they clam up or try to sound like a ‘science centre.’ But when visitors are intrigued by your questions and feel safe enough to respond honestly, they can be the source of some brilliant ideas.

–Katherine

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I’m a Mike Brown fan. Not because he discovered Eris and caused astronomers to re-define planets, but because of how he comes across in his book, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. I won’t blog about it again; here’s why I loved it.

So I’ve been following Mike Brown on Twitter. On June 11 he live-tweeted the data he collected while observing Haumea. Pretty awesome. Today he followed it up with a series of tweets, from:

Today I will live tweet more of what astronomers do in real time: writing proposals for telescope time! Now: working on 1st paragraph.

to:

Going out for coffee. #nevermind

As an exhibit developer I’ve been asked many times to (though not on this project) to give visitors an experience of “what it’s really like to do science.” Real science is hard. It’s exciting, but it’s also repetitive and painstaking and bureaucratic. I’m grateful for the perspective I get to have from the sidelines.

–Katherine

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One of the amazing things for me about the process we are working through to develop the galleries for this new science centre is how much iteration is allowed for in the process. By this I mean that the exhibits, the layouts, the “design” and even the voice of the writing go through many many variations as they evolve into what you are going to see on opening day. Even then, we are trying to leave enough open ended elements so that it can continue to evolve (and so that our visitors want to come back).

I thought it might be interesting to share a quick example of how much the voice (the person you might imagine speaking what is written on panels in the gallery) for the Earth and Sky gallery has evolved. A few months ago we often described the gallery “like cutting a line from the bedrock to the aurora and being amazed by the experience of everything in between.” Some of the words associated with it were “poetic” and “beautiful.” This was a good starting point, but as we started to play that tone out something didn’t fit. The problem it turns out was that we were biasing it too much  – we are honoring our visitors if we give them space to decide what their own reactions are.  The kind of experiences we hope to cultivate in the gallery are still going to offer the possibility of noticing things that are poetic or beautiful, but we’ve tried to think of it as starting a conversation, not directing one.

As a result of this I’m now thinking of the ES graphic panels as a conversation. Imagine walking through your neighborhood (either in the city or the country) with someone you respect, and who respects you (we’ve been calling them an “elder” – like a grandparent maybe)  and having a conversation be sparked by a specific observation about the physical world. That leads to a broader “insight” (like a piece of wisdom but not too hokey) and the chance to explain more if you want. I’ll post more about this as we go, but right now I’ll leave with an example from our experiments (this may or may not end up in the final text)

-Kris

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I’m editing text for the Human Body exhibit and I just got feedback I promise I have never been given on any other text I’ve ever written for any other exhibition:

can this be cheekier?

It’s just one more reason I like working here.

–Katherine

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I haven’t posted anything new in a while because we’ve started concentrated work on the graphics for the Human Body and Technology, Style and Art exhibitions. At any moment I either love or hate writing for exhibits. There’s not much middle ground between the exhilaration of finding the right wording for a fascinating concept and the grinding exhaustion of trying–again–to come up with a title for an exhibit that does it justice. So I wish I could write more here, but I need to write elsewhere.

–Katherine

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