Toby Parkin (The Science Museum)

0:23Okay. So thank you for that yes I am toby from the science museum this is the science museum and this is how it's looked for about the last hundred years it was founded after the great exhibition in 1851 and it became a huge museum called the south kensington museum soon after 1851 and then about 100 years ago that collection was split into the what is now the vna and then across the road the science museum so they were all once part of of one collection every year we attract just over three million visitors and we're a part of a group of four museums and between us we care for over seven million objects the just quickly the other three museums the museum of science and industry in manchester the media museum in bradford and the railway museum in york and although we care for seven million objects in any museum you're only likely to see about 10 of that collection on show.

1:17So it's very much the kind of shop window the rest is in storage around the country so this is this is an object rich gallery I'm going to be talking to you about interactive galleries because that's my my area we have a million children who come to the science museum every year. And we engage them in a variety of different ways we engage a lot through live events over half a million children come to us in school groups we reach them through live events like shows workshops there are even events where you can sleep over in the museum at night but I'm going to talk to you about interactive galleries I don't know if any of you have ever ever came to the science museum as a child do you want to put your hand up if you ever came to the science fiction as a child do you remember do you ever do you remember any of the interactive galleries put your hand up if you remember an interactive gallery yeah some of you do okay well.

2:12This is what it looked like in 1931 this was the world's first gallery museum gallery dedicated to children and it was mainly filmed it looks impressive doesn't it it's mainly filmed with what we call dioramas and a push-button diorama so you hit a button.

2:30And then a kind of a model landscape will turn this is one of the most staged photographs I've ever seen this was taken in 1934 four children looking at what I think are time measurement devices and the the aim of this gallery was to fire the imagination by letting children control the miracles of science and make them feel that science is a wonderful thing and very much to this day that aim hasn't changed so the children's gallery was in the science museum in various different forms for about 60 years.

3:02So it got taken out in the 90s and in 1986 we put in a much newer modern gallery at the top which is called launch pad some of you might think the launchpad is still there in a museum so that opened in 1986 primarily aged a aimed at children aged 7 to 14 and then we have a variety of other interactive galleries all targeted at at different ages as well.

3:28So the bottom is pattern pod which is from the sixes there's another gallery called the garden which is for underrates so I wonder what exhibit you remember when you came to the museum as a child I asked the internet that question.

3:39And I got some strange responses so one of the most popular exhibits that people remember when they were children when they came to the science museum was this one it's called the golden bull I can see some faces there recognizing it if you've never seen this before you're going to think this is bizarre but basically what it was is there was a golden ball in the middle of that table when the children who were loving it so much they're literally throwing themselves at it try to touch the gumball it would disappear into the table the science is quite high-end is to do a capacitance there's another there's a disc probably about six foot above the table and if if you interrupt the electric field between the table and the disc then it completes the circuit. And that's what takes the ball down.

4:21So the science is pretty high-end so probably not aimed at that age group.

4:23But they absolutely loved it.

4:25And it only got taken off gallery a few years ago another one that's really popular bubbles this is more modern lots of people remember anything to do with bubbles when they came to the science museum I think it's just a fun element of them police this is from 1951 this image so again it's quite old I think it's I'm just expecting you to be a little bit older than you are but um yeah. So but however we've had a public we still have police exhibits in the museum today one that's absolutely amazing is the automatic door so this this photo was taken in the 1970s automatic doors we think they've been around for forever they were only invented in the 50s and the first one was installed in 1960 so this was one of the most is probably the most popular interactive exhibit we've ever had at the science museum and it is literally just an automatic door and it's still there today if you come to museums in the basement so yeah but the other one that people always say is the anti-gravity room now I don't have a picture of the anti-gravity room because it doesn't exist people I don't know where this has come from but people on a daily basis come in and they say where's the anti-gravity room there's never been an anti-gravity room obviously if you think about it obviously there's not so I want to talk to you about how we ensure that things like this are relevant to children that they are memorable and they excite and engage children well one of the ways that we do that is that we watch you every time you come into the museum you are watched this is this is a record from 1952 where two boys came into the gallery on sunday the 26th of october they came in at 4 21 pm and they were watched as they went around the children's gallery so that's a that's a map of the children's gallery and you can see by the second how long they stayed at each exhibit.

6:09So this was the world's oldest visitor research department it was started in the 50s and we still do this today. So it's normally some museums do this in europe they tend to do with cameras they just watch you on a camera we literally follow you with a clipboard so if you look around sometimes you'll see someone following you in a clipboard and we guess how old you are we don't engage with you in any way we just watch you.

6:31And so this just to show we do this nowadays this is from 2011. If you come into the museum the front door there's a gallery just to the left it's called what's workshop and these were two ladies who walked in and again they're measured by the second and and we do it by the second because people don't stay long at exhibits like this so you can see there are some signs on the bottom left there if it's a g you stayed at the exhibit for under five seconds and if it's an l it was over five seconds if there's a d there. There was a point of discussion if there were more than one of you and p is photo so you can see the little the signs that are around up there.

7:05So they didn't stay long they mainly were staying under five seconds at most things. So if you scale this up we do this with samples of about 50 to 100 people you get to get a you get a picture of what your popular exhibits are which is all very well once you've made your gallery so it's great if you're redeveloping a gallery because you know what's being popular or not it doesn't help you if you're where.

7:25I am today and you're developing a new gallery so how do we do that how do we ensure that they're relevant for children well we're quite scientific in our approach in terms of interactive exhibits we classify them so here's we classified them in many many ways there's just four that I'm going to show you today the top two are open and closed top left is a closed exhibit because it only has one outcome it's a it's a magnet exhibit with a piece of copper all you can do is cause another magnet to float in the copper there's only one outcome. So it's closed an open exhibit is the one on the right where you have to make a flying machine put it onto the air vent and let it go and there's multiple outcomes to that exhibit in fact you could be at that exhibit for the rest of your life investigating the science learning about lift and aerodynamics things like that.

8:10So that's that's open then the bottom is passive and active so passive is what how it sounds it's a passive exhibit you're using your senses you're not really touching it you're just looking and active is physical and we try not to skew towards any one of these so we try to mix them up.

8:24And we go so far as we plot them on axes like this so active and passive is up and down and across is open and closed and we try and be more in the top right quarter because an open active exhibit is better than a closed passive one so we're quite scientific in how we approach it we do this through lots and lots of different lenses we try and mix the experiences up because if it's all too active it becomes a bit like a playground and for us. That's not good because people in our scenario learn less in in that kind of environment if it's too passive it's a bit boring so we have to mix it up the other thing that we look for is to mix up the type of experience so this is a piece of research that we draw on where there's six qualities that we look for in an interactive exhibit the first one is curiosity so are the children interested in the phenomena that we're showing so this one is you're looking through a lens filter and you can you're just watching water freeze and it's a polarizing filter so you can see all the different colors so there's an innate curiosity in that it's a beautiful effect children are really interested in it I'm going to mix this up with some older ones this challenge exhibits are really really important for us and there's something about being able to show off in a public environment or compete against your friends that children love so this one they're trying to pick a lock I don't know why we used to teach children to pick locks but they love it.

9:49And then similar to that one is breaking into a safe so this is where it's great if an interactive exhibit can teach you a skill or give you a confidence in this case lock picking I mean look at the group they're waiting I think they're all boys as well can't wait to pick that look anyway control is really important this bizarrely is probably the most this is pretty the best interactive that we have in the museum at the moment and it's just a circuit you just have to wire a circuit or the six of them.

10:18Actually and they're all different challenges and it's just that control that manipulation of a phenomena that people absolutely love so we measure dwell time sometimes in seconds we measure the 12-time of this in between the average is between about 10 and half an hour 10 minutes and a half an hour so very popular exhibit some of you might remember the huge sound dishes that we had in the kind of 90s so communication is really really important in interactive galleries a social element that's why sometimes we have online games actually in a gallery it's obviously you could play that game at home.

10:51But there's something about the social element of being able to stand next to someone talk to them test your ideas against them as you're playing against them on a screen and obviously with these sound issues that's really important as well playfulness is really important I'm running out of times I'm going to speed up playfulness is really important I think the automatic door was so popular just because it was very playful then the last thing I wanted to say is that.

11:12That's all very well. But if you were to design all your exhibits based on those qualities you still would end up with rubbish exhibits the most important thing that we do is we test absolutely everything.

11:21So this is a really really simple exhibit it's called river bridge it's got three kind of gorges that you have to make a bridge over we went we went through a ridiculous amount of testing to get that right.

11:32So we went through six prototypes the one at the top left is the original that had two problems with it one of them was that.

11:40There was no level to the problem so there weren't it wasn't kind of staged there was only one level of difficulty the other problem is that people would build the bridge in the river so you can see the prototypes that went through and eventually we ended up with this one where we were stopping people in building in the river so we test absolutely everything every exhibit will be tested sometimes five times through prototypes with samples of hundreds of people children to make sure that they work.

12:05So I'm really over time.

12:07So I'm going to stop there so just a summary is that firstly we watch you we're really scientific in how we approach things. And we test absolutely everything. So that's it thank you