Enhancing exhibits to improve visitor learning and engagement
Background
The Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) aimed to enhance its inclusive learning experience by inspiring people of all ages to explore the diversity of Chicago.
To represent Chicago's diversity and inspire all ages, CAC sought to explore community needs.
Client's Team
CAC elevates design literacy while establishing Chicago as an architectural nexus, fostering vibrant civic engagement.
Our Team
The CAC's Education and Exhibits teams partnered with Institute of Design researchers to analyze visitor engagement.
A CAC volunteer describes an architectural exhibit to visitors.
Exhibition content posed comprehension barriers due to varied learning styles and language diversity.
Diverse learning approaches and thematic purpose enrich CAC visitor exploration.
CAC visitors seek immersion in Chicago's architectural legacy, each bringing unique engagement preferences and objectives.
Research revealed that visitors gravitate toward engagement that sparks curiosity, requiring varied learning pathways.
Key visitor themes emerged, revealing distinct preferences for information delivery and engagement methods.
Analysis distilled visitor insights into three core themes: Content, Communication, and Experience.
Research synthesis captured visitor interests, docent perspectives, and benchmarking insights from parallel institutions.
These themes yielded design principles that shaped strategic exhibit enhancements.
The Chicago Architecture Center missed insights into how visitors absorb content, overlooking key opportunities to improve.
CAC relied solely on post-visit surveys, missing potential insights from other visitor touchpoints.
The singular focus on post-visit surveys failed to capture visitor engagement, learning abilities, and exhibit effectiveness.
CAC lacked understanding of how visitors learn, missing opportunities for direct feedback to improve exhibits.
We created a matrix of visitor types to categorize CAC visitors' learning behaviors.
Visitor interviews revealed diversity in age, culture, geography, visit duration, and learning styles. We categorized visitors in a 2x2 matrix categorizing visitors by visit duration (short or long) and learning approach (passive or active).
The 2x2 matrix framework provides clear understanding of distinct visitor groups, enabling CAC to tailor experiences and design effective programming aligned with visitors' preferences.
CAC connects Chicago, residents, and visitors, serving as a microcosm of local culture for all.
CAC aims to immerses visitors in Chicago's rich culture and history.
An inclusive learning experience at CAC will deepen residents' and visitors' understanding and appreciation of Chicago's diverse culture.
A multicultural, multigenerational hub of Chicago knowledge will emerge, with diversified exhibits and content for greater community relevance.
Our proposal aligns with CAC's 2025 strategic plan, focusing research efforts.
We aligned our research with CAC's Strategic Plan to support their vision and define recommendations.
Our research focused on CAC's core objectives: educating diverse audiences, representing Chicago's multicultural landscape, and leveraging digital tools to enhance visitor learning.
Our qualitative research expertise aligned with CAC's human-centric goals. We provided insights to enhance educational outreach, improve representation, and optimize digital offerings.
Goal One
CAC is a leading forum that educates and inspires people of all ages to take active roles with the built environment around them to create and live in the communities they want, need, and deserve.
Goal Two
CAC strives to represent the diversity of Chicago through everything we do.
Goal Three
CAC embraces digital tools and virtual experiences to bring Chicago’s architecture to people everywhere.
Solution
Introducing Navigator: a strategy that uses combinatorial design principles to optimize learning, expand narratives, and empower engagement for diverse learners.
We created a variety of options for presenting information, enhancing visitor engagement through learner-specific strategies.
Tailored recommendations for each learner type combined design principles from a choice-making menu of content, experience, and communication.
CAC can mix and match design principles from content, experience, and communication to create effective learner-specific engagement strategies based on project needs.
CAC welcomes local and global visitors from all demographics, backgrounds, cultures, and ethnicities.
All visitors come to CAC to learn about the city's evolution, absorbing information in their own unique ways.
After observing that CAC visitors spend varying amounts of time in the exhibit space, influenced by their backgrounds and preferred learning styles, our team categorized them into four distinct groups.
Visual Explorers and Experiencers prefer shorter visits, engaging visually and experientially. Visual Learners and Sensorial Learners prefer longer visits, focusing on visual info and multi-sensory approaches.
CAC visitors explore Chicago's history, development, and attractions.
Global and local visitors to CAC value optimized learning, comprehensive narratives, and empowering interactions.
Our research into CAC visitors uncovered a wide range of motivations, experiences, and expectations.
Visitors come to CAC for various reasons, interact with exhibits in unique ways, seek different types of knowledge.
To address the wide range of variables among CAC visitors, we categorized findings into content, experience, and communication for recommendations and design principles.
We created a set of concise examples of exhibit design principles to guide CAC leaders and researchers when designing current and future exhibits.
- Each exhibit should include contextual information from history and peripheral suburbs beyond the city core, to provide a comprehensive narrative and spark more interest in the minds of the visitors.
- The exhibit's content should factor in infrastructural changes and how they impacted the behavior and lives of communities (e.g. redlining, environmental racism, segregation). This ensures more inclusive narratives and a truer reflection of the city's history.
- An effective exhibit should provide for personal takeaways and connection, and to make each CAC visit an enabler for personal growth.
We developed a set of examples for enabling visitors to have greater input on how exhibits are designed. This can fundamentally improve their relationship with CAC.
- Visitors should be able to choose the topics of future exhibits to build a strong engagement with CAC. This type of community engagement empowers visitors and helps CAC increase its relevancy.
- CAC's engagement with the community should extend beyond its walls. Visitors should be able to sign up for continued education based on the exhibits they attended to continue learning and engaging with CAC, even after their visit.
- CAC should incorporate additional post engagement experiences, helping build nostalgia so that visitors have an even stronger desire to return.
We gave specific recommendations for how information should be conveyed to visitors before, during, and after their visit to CAC.
- The interactive engagement should be hands-on with facts and statistics to make learning meaningful, while considering the different learner types.
- Multiple interactive modules should be seamless, to enhance learning experiences. The exhibit should have kinesthetic learning through physical interaction, to enhance memory retention.
- Artifact experimentation should have clear instructions for use and purpose, for deeper learning experiences and meaningful takeaways.
- Exhibits should have variation of textual content to make information more digestible for all visitors, regardless of background or level of education.
We combined learner types and design principles, providing CAC a strategy library for purposeful, personal, enriching visitor experiences.
CAC now has a tailored approach that focuses on learners' interests to create memorable and meaningful experiences.
CAC tailors learning experiences by combining strategies based on each visitor group's preferred methods, interests, and engagement factors.
CAC connects learners across cultural boundaries by customizing content and delivery, enhancing engagement and outcomes.
Impact
The strategy package catalyzed a service-based initiative that CAC further refined and developed post-delivery.
Research findings guided CAC in identifying and prioritizing key areas for service development.
Our findings gave CAC leaders deep insight into visitors' needs, helping identify profiles and prioritize services tailored to patrons' learning styles.
CAC will partner with local establishments to enhance cultural immersion, engaging learning, repeat visits, and community connection, building on visitor insights.
Process
Research Methods
22 Participants
Interviewed Over 22 Hours
A core part of our research involved conducting different types of interviews with visitors and staff at CAC and other museums. These methods included:
- Intercepts: Quick interactions in public spaces to capture immediate insights.
- In-context: Interviews to gather observations and discussions in the user’s environment.
- Straight: Interviews utilizing direct questioning in structured conversations.
- Elicitation: Interactive activities to uncover deeper emotions and needs (e.g. card sorting).
Intercepts
In-Context
Straight
Elicitation
5-Week Research Plan
We conducted research and provided CAC strategic recommendations to enhance offerings and engagement.
Week 1
Context Building
Initiated research by clarifying protocols and conducting preliminary intercepts at the Chicago Architecture Center.
Week 2
User Research
Visited interactive exhibits, including the Chicago Field Museum and Mindworks, to conduct interviews and inform user research.
Week 3
Synthesizing Data
Conducted card sorting activities and developed user models to synthesize research findings.
Week 4
Identifying Users and User Needs
Developed design principles to enhance CAC's audience engagement and overall experience, grounded in research insights on user needs.
Week 5
Presentation
Formalized research insights, developed strategic recommendations, and presented findings for CAC, outlining avenues to better serve their visitors.