Renewing Cultural Halls Through Digital Experience Design

For more years than I can remember I’ve had the privilege of working with graduate student interns from NYU, specifically from three programs: Digital Media Design For Learning, Games For Learning, and Educational Communication and Technology. Whether advancing user experience design at Girl Scouts or innovating digital engagement at AMNH, their skills, talents, and creativity always set the bar high. So imagine how thrilled I was when all three programs asked me to give a talk about anything I liked. It was an opportunity to give back.

I knew whatever topic I picked, it would have to be a project that their students worked on. That was the easy part. What HADN’T they worked on? But I also wanted it to be something I was presenting for the first time. So I decided to reveal something I had never shared publicly (spoiler alert!): I am writing a new book. Since publishing Seltzertopia in October 2018, as I traveled the country presenting at over two dozen locations, I was always asked: What are you writing next? I usually responded by laughing it off, as I thought I was done writing books. Maybe a board game, or a trashy murder mystery. But a REAL book? Why would I put myself through that again?

Well, this past fall I found the answer to both questions (what is my next book AND why would I do this to myself). I’ll tell that story in more detail in a future post. For now, I decided to adapt a video-heavy chapter of my book, which I figured would play well online, and dig into the question of how technology can help museums revisit their cultural halls in ways that both address the inequities and misrepresentations of the past and pave a way into the future through mutually-beneficial collaborations with indigenous communities.

I used the opportunity to revisit The Video Bridge. Of all the projects throughout my 25+ in new media, this one certainly ranks towards the top of ones I hold most dear in my heart. Using a telepresence robot controlled by staff members of a Canadian First Nation museum to offer virtual tours of their cultural treasures within the American Museum of Natural History… well, I found the effect just magical. A perfect example of digital media doing what it promises – erasing distance to build human connections and break down stereotypes.

The focus of my talk however was not to present The Video Bridge. It was to show the iterative design process we used to get from the initial concept to the final product, and how it required us to trust user research, rapid prototyping, public piloting and more in order to survive that creative journey. And that, in fact, is what my book will be all about, a handbook for experience designers (in or out of museums) to do the same.

I loved giving the presentation. If you watch it below I think you will see how delighted I was to be re-connecting with many of my former interns, and how much the presentation for them took them back to a time surrounded by museum riches and the opportunities we afforded them to think outside the box and push the limits of museum design.