What website authors can learn from museums

Contemporary museums and websites share many of the same problems. Museum experience and solutions have much to teach web designers. Similarities include the challenges:

• of getting an audience;
• of providing content in a format that the broad general public can access and which will be meaningful to them;
• of organising large and often disparate congeries of resources.

More >>

Precursors and early forms of the museum also provide concepts, organisational strategies and metaphors that

"Art galleries and museums arrange exhibits in carefully constructed viewing sequences. At blockbuster shows the long lines of visitors shuffle from one exhibit to the next.

Designing a great museum, then, has traditionally been a task of relating wall or cabinet display space...to a circulation system that efficiently conducts visitors through the collection. Nineteenth-century neoclassicists typically solved the problem by symetrically arranging long, rectgangular, skylit gallery spaces around grand, central entrance halls' visitors would enter and orient themselves, circulate artound the perimeter, and eventually return to the starting point. The great examples are Leo von Klenze's Glypothek and Alte Pinakothek in Munich and Schinkel's Altes Museum in Berlin... Within such arrangements, the curatorial task is to order exhibits into meaningful sequences. In the Glypothek works of sculpture have traditionally been set out chronologically -- beginning with Egypt, progressing through greece and Rome, and ending with the moderns like canova. In the painting galleries of the Alytes Museumthere was a carefully constructed progression of 'quality,' leading up to the 'perfection' of the High Renaissance. And in the Pinakothek arrangement was by 'schools' in roughly chronological order: Flemish, german, French, Spanish, and Italian. natural history museums, responding to different intellectual agendas, usually arranged exhibits according to scientific principles -- by taxonomic grouping, in evolutionary sequence, or by geographic origin."
Mitchell, William J., City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn

Museums are arguably our most complex and sophisticated form of scientific and technical communication. Museums deal with many analogous issues to those facing web authors. They generally have a huge amount of content -- most of which their general audience is not interested in. They have complex exhibition organisation and display issues to present that they think their audience will be interested in. The have a huge amount of potential information about their content -- which they must condense dopwn to essential facts and concepts accessible to diverse ages, educational and cultural backgrounds. In Modeling Information for Three-Dimensional Space: Lessons Learned from Museums, Saul Carliner exhaustively explored both the similarities and what web designers can learn from the processes.

"Because visits to museums are voluntary in nature, museum staffs must motivate people to visit. ...First, museum staffs must motivate visitors to enter the building. ...To address this concern, museums have attempted to broaden their constituencies. ... In some instances, exhibits are designed to appeal to the general public. Called "blockbusters," they are temporary exhibits (running from a few months to a year), focus on well-known topics with broad public interest, and are primarily intended to lure in large numbers of visitors."

Carliner points out that website designers and technical communicators pays too little attention to aspects of cultural difference. For example, many believe that technical communication is objective -- free from bias, therefore technical communicators are rarely encouraged to identify their own cultural biases and be aware of how these might affect the sites and products they develop.

Objects form the centerpiece of most museum exhibits. Because of that, and because the primary purpose of museums is educational, museum professionals often refer to their work as object-based learning. One of the most significant choices a museum exhibit design team makes, therefore, is the choice of objects to display. Choices are purposeful. ...only after the content is chosen [via preparation of a 'storyline' or detailed content and production plan] do exhibit design teams choose objects.

...When the design was driven by subject matter experts called curators, the heart of most exhibits was a series of cases crammed with artifacts (such as paintings, furniture, textiles, photographs, and documents) and accompanied by detailed documentation on each object (usually typewritten). This dense documentation was primarily prepared by one scholar for use by other scholars. This reference-like approach to displaying objects created a barrier between museums and the public. The public was overwhelmed with the quantity of objects and the technical language and detail of the documentation. In fact, studies indicated that few visitors actually read labels and, of those who do, most spend less than half a minute doing so. When museums started broadening their audiences two decades ago, they realized that: [the] museums of past [would have to] be set aside, reconstructed, and transformed from a cemetery of bric-a-brac into a nursery of living thoughts (La Follette, 1983, p.41). In response, exhibit designers transformed their approach to design, using four concepts to guide them in their efforts."

These transformative concepts can be summerised as:

• Immersion: "a museum exhibition should immerse visitors in its story."
• Themes: Divide complex topics into a limited number of key themes.
• Layering: 'a museum exhibit is not a book on a wall' -- visitors should not have to read all of the labels to learn about the topic of the exhibit, rather they should be able to explore it to the depth that suits them.
  "...labels--text signs on the wall that provide explanatory information--are presented in three levels of depth. Visitors can look at the label and identify its tier, and read all of the labels in a chosen tier see a complete story. These tiers included:
  • Introduction to the gallery. These labels provide the title of the gallery and an orienting quote. The orientating quotes were originally made during time period depicted in the gallery. These labels are the largest, so visitors can easily identify them several feet away.
  • Theme labels. These labels introduce key themes in the exhibit. The labels consist of a heading, a limited amount of text (no more than 12 lines) and, occasionally, a drawing or reproduced photograph. The text on these labels is large enough to see a few feet away.
  • Object labels. These labels, the most numerous in the exhibition, describe characteristics of individual objects, such as their significance or the materials used to make them. Not every object has a label. The text on these labels is the longest, but rarely longer than 12 lines. The type on the labels is small; visitors must stand close to read it. Some of the object labels also have pictures to further amplify points."
• Skimmability: written content must be readable by users who may be uncomfortable, hurrying or otherwise in no mood to study labels in depth.

Each of this is productively exportable to the online environment, providing good broad guidelines for presenting information to broad general audiences. Of particular importance in recognition of the analogy between museum skimming and web scanning -- most users consciously read only the first few lines on a screen, more often scanning text for key words etc. Jakob Nielsen, for example suggests an 'inverted pyramid' structure for online text: Providing main information in the heading, a summery of key points and outcomes and then deeper presentation of the whole story.

More >> Pick'n'Mix: What the Experts Say...>> Good Web Writing >>

"at the heart of a good museum exhibit is a good story. Like stories in books or film, 'museum exhibits must capture the visitor's curiosity...Our attention is attracted by novel or unexplained stimuli3Ú4a loud noise, a sudden bustling activity, a strange animal, or a mysterious object. It is by appealing to this universal propensity that museums can attract the psychic energy of a visitor long enough so that a more extensive interaction, perhaps leaning to learning, can later take place' (Csikzentmihalyi & Hermanson, 1995, pp. 36-37). The recipe for successful storytelling in exhibits is the same as that in literature: riveting plots and engaging characters. To create riveting plots, museum exhibit designers employ a number of standard storytelling techniques. One of the most basic is making sure the exhibit has a distinct beginning, middle, and ending. For example, the exhibit on networks begins with a two-part opening: a video overview, followed a room where visitors received an "identity card." Visitors use the card to choose one of four virtual tour guides to lead them through the exhibit (seen by visitors on interactive display terminals); the computer records the choice on the identity card and so visitors see related material at each guide station in the exhibit. The middle of the exhibit is a sequence of galleries, each of which describes a different type of network. The exhibit ends with another two-part sequence: a gallery presenting the negative side of networks, followed by a room where users can connect to the Internet. Within the exhibit, exhibit designers use common storytelling techniques such as immersion, juxtaposition, repetition, and subliminal messages to engage the visitor."

The need to capture users' attention, to pique their curiosity so they linger and explore applies equally to websites. The rhetorical and conceptual tools developed over millenia of development of storytelling techniques can be exploited online both ion presenting written and multimedia content and in the creation of 'site ambience', the emotional response that users will have to the site.

More: Rhetoric >>

Also see: Donald Kunze's seven central universal strategies in making and structuring art works. web essay: Information Design >>

Carliner notes that exhibition designers always try to include a 'wow! factor' -- something which will provoke a visceral response from their audiences, which will encourage them to immerse themselves in the exhibition, which will add character to the exhibit and which will be remembered. Web designers also need to differentiate themselves from the millions of competing sites online. He points out:

"The second challenge facing designers in bringing "wow" to their websites comes from the almost "religious" battle between usability experts and graphic designers on ideal approaches to web design. Usability experts, led by the likes of Jakob Nielsen, tend to focus on observable, measurable patterns of effectiveness that can be independently verified through usability research. But measuring affective responses like "wow" taxes even the best refined research methodologies, and graphic designers and others with backgrounds in the arts and humanities are often hard pressed to produce data from universal research that would support the use of non-standard approaches, like those of storytelling."

* See Saul Carliner's essay: Modeling Information for Three-Dimensional Space: Lessons Learned from Museums

"A Norway house, built of beams without mortar or stone; shoes and sandals from Russia, Siam and Egypt; the skin of a man dressed as parchment; a drinking cup of the skull of a Moor killed in the beleaguering of Haerlem; warlike arms used in China; Chinese Songs, Chinese paper, Chinese books, and a great many other articles from China; Egyptian mummies and Egyptian idols; several Roman coins; a Roman lamp which burns always under ground and another which burned eternally; an hand of a Meermaide presented by Prince Mauritz; a mushroom above 100 years old, which grew on the banks of the Haerlemer river; a petrified toad-stool; a box of very large amber presented by Daniel Beckler; a thunderbolt given by Melchior de Moncheson and a mallet or hammer that the savages in New Yorke kill with, (...). In the 17th century, this bizarre collection made up part of the Chiefest Rarities in the Publick Theater and Anatomie-Hall of the University of Leyden, according to Museums, a brilliant study written in 1904 by the Englishman David Murray. There was also the skeleton of an ass upon which sat a woman that killed her daughter; the ske-leton of a man, sitting upon an ox, executed for stealing cattle; a young thief hanged, being the Bridegroom whose Bride stood under the gallows, very curiously set up in his ligaments." (quoted in David Murray, Daniel J Sherman & Iri Trogoff "Museums / Museum Culture")

Reading about the collections of medieval and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century churches, treasuries and curiosity collections, the antecedents of the museum, one is reminded of the senseless classification system in a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in a story by Borges, which inspired Foucault to write The Order of Things. In this mysterious reference work, animals are divided into: (a) belon-ging to the Em-peror, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camel-hair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.

The classification systems of the collections Murray studied are almost as strange. Until the seventeenth century, the place occupied by objects in a collection was determined by their 'correspondence' with regard to material or size. Symmetry was also a primary aim in creating an exhibition. Thus were created the most extraordinary linkages, for example: an ar-madillo be-side an os-trich egg; a cocoa nut beside a stone swan; a bird of para-dise be-side a remora. Most often, the exhibited objects were a hodge-podge of natural and artificial rarities, and were considered a spectacle whose main purpose was to amaze. For example, the anatomical col-lection at Dresden was arranged like a ple-asure garden. Skeletons were interwoven with branches of trees in the form of hedges so as to form vistas.

Things were selected according to the degree to which they deviated from the everyday and as illustrations of religious or scientific beliefs. A good collection always had giant bones, mummies, human skin, and a unicorn's horn, said to possess wondrous healing powers. New classification principles emerged in the eighteenth century. This was to Murray's relief, as he looked somewhat askance at the 'unscientific character of the first museums', which were based on 'metaphysics and theology'. As specialisation increased in all areas, art, science and nature became separate fields and correspondence became less important than difference

Random quotes

The medieval philosopher Hugh of St. Victor (1096-1141) reminded his readers that the significance of things will always be more important than significance of words; "The philosopher knows only the significance of words, but the significance of things is is far more excellent than that of words, because the latter was established by usage, but Nature dictated the former. The latter is the voice of man, the former the voice of God speaking to man. The latter, once uttered, perishes; the former, once created, subsists." (quoted p. 88, Albert Borgmann, Holding on to Reality: The nature of information at the turn of the millenium

" Most important. they [mirror worlds or virtual worlds] are microcosms -- intricate worlds come alive in small packages. WEhether in the shape of a Victorian winter garden, an electric train layout, a Josepth Cornell shadow-box or a mere three-inch plastic dome with snowflakes softly settling inside, microcosms are intriguing. They show you patterns and help you make discoveries that you'd never have come across otherwise. ...they are thought-tools of great power and evocativeness."
Gelernter, David, Mirror Worlds (see all 181-184)

"In contrast to the souvenir, the collection offers example rather than sample, metaphor rathe than metonymy. The collectionsw does not displace attention to the past; rather, the past is at the service of the collection, for whereas the souvenirs lends authenticity to the past, the past lends authenticity to the collection. The collection seeks a form of self-enclosure which is possible because of its ahistoricism. The collection replaces history with clasification, with order beyond the realm of temporality. In the collection, time is not something to be restored to an origin; rather, all time is made similtaneous or synchronous within the collection's world."
Susan Stwart, On Longing, p. 151

Walczak, Marek and Martin Wattenberg, 'WonderWalker (A Global Online Wunderkammer)' 2000
http://www.walkerart.org/gallery9/wunderkammer/ -- WonderWalker, a project commissioned by Gallery 9/Walker Art Center, is an open-ended, self-oganizing collection of the Internet.

The museum and the encyclopaedia attained general acceptance in the century of the Enlightenment as models by which to fathom the world, but, they have remained until now, as totally dissimilar from each other as their disposal over material objects. The museum functions through actual objects, while the encyclopaedia filters and distils its subject matter through the media of text and illustration, treating it without material plasticity. Yet, because of this, it is able to manoeuvre more easily into abstract contexts. In retrospect, one gains the impression that the museum and the encyclopaedia of the 18th century were two competing means by which to represent the world, whose prospects differed widely. The question which must be asked, is how did the museum survive the rise of the encyclopaedia, at all? At first, by practising mimesis; the museum parodied the encyclopaedia's triumph, striving itself for encyclopaedic completeness. This was at the expense of the cosmological unity of the art and curiosity cabinets, which had to be relinquished, as the museum was, one might say, arranged into volumes. These were not alphabetically arranged books, as in the case of the encyclopaedia, but special collections divided according to specialist criteria of classification amongst various institutions. This dissolution into specialist collections made possible the encyclopaedic completeness of the museum. Thus the encyclopaedia's triumph was not to be deterred, but the loss of standing for the museum was averted.
Grasskamp, Walter, (translated from German by Heather Eastes), Reviewing the Museum - or: The Complexity of Things, Nordisk Museologi, 1994

The museum in its simplest form consists of a building to house collections of objects for inspection, study and enjoymentÉA museum thus gathers for convenience under one roof material which originally was widely distributed through both time and space. Secondly it provides the identification and annotation of the objects as a first step towards understanding them.

One must always proceed from the known to the unknown, sometimes step by step and sometimes by imaginative and exhilerating leaps as circumstances offer.

Adams, P.R., Allan, Douglas A., Coremans, P., Daifuku, H., Harrison, M., Molajoli, B. and Schommer, P., Organisation of Museums: Practical Advice, Unesco Press, 1974