Transcript

Abby: Matters of Experience is a project of Lorem Ipsum, an experience design company headquartered in New York City.

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Welcome back, all our regular listeners. Thanks for being here with us today. And if you’re new and enjoy today’s show, please subscribe. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, this is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today we’re talking with the lovely Liz Nacron. She is Partner and President of Creative & Production at Live Marketing, an agency that creates highly engaging B2B and B2E events, whether in-person, virtual or hybrid. Liz has nearly 30 years of experience developing and executing live events rooted in strategic storytelling, working her way up from the ground floor to president, which I can really appreciate. She’s an active board member of the EDPA, which, for those who don’t know, is the Experiential Designers and Producers Association, where she chairs the Future Leaders Committee, serving the next generation of event professionals. Liz, welcome to our show.

Liz: Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here today.

Brenda: Liz, you were introduced to me as one of the shining stars in the events and exhibits industry, especially in the world of trade shows and what makes them great. You are especially noted for your work with the Future Leaders Committee. Describe the trade show environment from your perspective. What’s good and tell us about some of the bad also.

Liz: Well, my answer today is different than maybe what it would have been pre-COVID. Obviously, our industry has been through quite a lot, but I think at the end of the day, the trade show is still good for what the trade show has always been good for. And that is, it’s a rare opportunity where people get to come face to face to test out, learn about and experience products and solutions that brands have to offer.

The brands get an opportunity to really craft and curate the message and the story around their brand specific to that audience. It’s not just their corporate website, it’s, it’s what is this product? What does it mean to this particular target audience? And they get a chance to share that.

So that’s the good thing. I think the bad is that everyone has been through so much with COVID that they’re still very much just coming back into the face-to-face trade show event space. And so it feels like where we were before COVID, where everyone was kind of competing to have the most experiential activity or storytelling experience in their booth has kind of gone on a long pause.

And at this point people are just trying to figure out if they can even attend a trade show in a certain vertical anymore. And if they can, how can they do it but still stay within their new budget confines? So, that’s, I would say, the bad at the moment is there’s a long road ahead of us trying to get back to where we were before, but on the positive side, everyone’s craving it, and so I think it will come back. It’s just a matter of time.

Abby: So when you think about that smaller footprint, let’s say brands who continue to go to trade shows and want to invest, but at a reduced budget size, they’re looking at a much smaller square footage and when you compare it to, let’s say, a museum, which is often a large square footage, a trade show, you just don’t have much space to tell their story quite quickly. It’s sometimes difficult for a team to do. How do you navigate that conversation with your clients, Liz?

Liz: For us, we really don’t try to get our clients to do that part of the work. We’ll get on a call with them and we’ll ask them a bunch of questions, you know, everything from what are your objectives? Who’s your target audience? What is the culture of your company? What’s the tone of the story that you want to tell in your booth? What are the key messages? Do you have any product releases coming? Questions like that. We really ask them way more than we need to know. We let them talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And then we cull it down into a five-minute story or script or experience.

We then give them something back and they go, oh my gosh, yes, that’s exactly what we were trying to say, and we would have never gotten there on our own because they’re too close to it, and they feel like they have to say it all. And so, they really rely on an agency like ours to do that, that part of the hard work for them and sort of show them the shiny thing that can come from all that, you know, valuable information that they want to convey.

Brenda: Well, it’s definitely the, the art of the craft, isn’t it? And when you define story specifically in the exhibits and events industry, are there specific elements of design or specific touchpoints that are essential to telling the story that, you know, as you’re listening to the brain dump going on, the data dump, are there specific things that you’re listening for because you know that those are going to be one of the essential or several of the essential touchpoints?

Liz: Yes. We always try to craft the story from the perspective of what are the challenges of the body that has entered your booth and sat in this seat and wants to hear what you have to offer. What are the things in their day-to-day job, life, that your brand, your product, your solution will solve for them and that’s what we’re trying to convey.

And then, the second part of that is what can they do at the end of hearing or experiencing that story to take action to help keep the momentum going and take that, you know, maybe piqued interest that we’ve created through that short story and have it lead them into a warmer conversation with a sales rep who is now being introduced to someone who just learned a little bit about how that brand’s going to help them.

Brenda: Now, this is in the museum world, in the events world, and in all of our related experiential worlds, understanding target audience is absolutely critical, and it really is like you were describing the beginning piece. How is it that you are instructing your clients to come to you with audience information? Like, how are you asking them to be able to prime you and your team?

Liz: So, that’s really where our question set typically will start is about their audience. And then we ask questions about what is that audience care-abouts? What are the things in their, you know, personal life that they typically like to do. Like we really try to dig in and understand, you know, who are these people? A lot of our clients have done persona research, and that’s really valuable too, because they’ve kind of already done some of the legwork, creating different personas and profiles, if you will, that we can then use to help us inform the story that we need to tell to those persona types.

Abby: And so, what are some of those touchpoints? So, when you think about the design that seems to be throughout all of the experiences that you craft, is it that there has to be a docent there every time? Is it that there’s an interactive? Is there something physical to take away, physical to touch? Sort of, what are some of the design touchpoints that you always try to think about and integrate into these trade show exhibitions?

Liz: First of all, what is the thing that when this prospect walks by this booth, is going to make them feel compelled to take that one step from the aisle carpet into the booth carpet. We really try to help our clients design booth experiences that have levels.

So, if it’s someone who maybe has never heard of your brand before, we want to start out with some sort of introductory experience, like, let’s set the stage about this company and this brand. Let’s give them the five-minute story and at the end of that five-minute story, they now know something they didn’t know before. And then we offer them a next step. And that next step could be, you know, do you want to participate in a demo? Great. Let me walk you over. At that point, they introduce them to a booth rep who we’re now handing over a warm lead to.

Or their next step might be, you know what? Now that I know a little bit about your company, it’s actually not a good fit. And like, thank you so much for giving me a good experience, but I’m going to keep walking down the aisle to the next trade show booth, and that’s okay too.

So, it really is, just at the core of it, that’s kind of how we, we like to design the experiences is from a distance, what do they see? What’s that experience once they get closer and then what are the activities or experience areas or storytelling activities or product demos in the booth that we can use as tools to help get that person deeper on that journey?

Brenda: So, I have to ask you, you’ve done this for so long and with so much expertise, give us an example of an experience that has lured people to the booth in just, bam, captured them.

Liz: We have a client who we help at a vet tech trade show and the vet tech audience is, is very passionate about what they do and they work really hard. So, we designed a booth experience that started with a theater area on the corner of the booth, sort of the most front facing aisle, and we created an, a schedule of content that changed all throughout the day.

We intentionally wanted to create different presentations focused on different content subject areas that would be interesting to them and ultimately invite them to come back over and over and over again. But once they came for the first time and they sat down, we put an iPad in their hands and we said, you know, from this point forward in your booth experience, you’re going to be using this iPad.

So, we started out our presentation, which was sort of an animated storytelling journey that they were following along these two animals, these two pets, a cat, and a dog. And they were making choices along the way on the iPad that helped our live presenter determine where the story was going to go. Of course, all along the way it was peppered with how this company’s products and solutions helped improve the life of this patient, which in this case was a dog or cat.

We didn’t invite them at the end of the presentation to give their iPad back and head back into the aisle. We said, your journey is only just begun. So, now take your iPad and come around to the other side of this theater booth wall, and you’re going to get to follow along in the life of this cat and dog that you just helped save.

So, they take the iPads around, and we’ve strategically placed triggers in the booth, in all the different booth areas. And we invited them to, at that point really take their own non-linear journey through the booth. And at each stop point they used the tablet to scan one of the triggers and launch a deeper dive part of the story of this cat or dog where we now really showed how that company’s product or solution made an impact on that patient.

By the end of this experience, they turned in their iPad, they answered a few questions, qualifying questions, and in exchange they were given a stuffed animal plushie version of the cat or the dog who they had helped save. And through the qualifying questions that they answered, we now knew if they were a qualified lead or not a qualified lead.

So, if someone handed us the iPad and they weren’t qualified, we handed them the plushie, we thank them, and they went on their merry way. But if they were qualified, one of our professional booth engagers strategically would say it looked like you expressed interest through your journey in X, Y, or Z. I’d like to connect you to our sales rep in this area, and they walked them over and that conversation continued.

And so, what was most amazing about this booth experience was that the average dwell time of people in this booth was 20 minutes. And for people who attend trade shows, often they’d know that’s like a really long time, especially on average for people to spend in a booth. And so, we felt like it was a huge success. The brand felt like it was a huge success, and it just provided this audience with so much information. But in just a fun, you know, storytelling way.

Abby: I think this is such a good idea because you, you got people with play, and I feel like get people playing with your product, get them enjoying your product, get them into and part of it, and then you nicely segue to the soft sell.

Liz: Yeah.

Brenda: Many, many years ago I had a student actually applying for an internship, and the student was applying to one of the larger exhibit and trade show design firms and they gave him a challenge, and the test was to take a target audience that had to go to trade shows as a part of their job, and they hated it.

They found trade shows boring. The target audience were sales reps of a very large consumer appliances company, and the student, so proud, the student knew, make it entirely about the target audience, make it entirely about the people on the floor. And the student designed a pre-show, and at-the-show, on-the-floor, and a post-show experience, that basically took these sales reps and turned them into superheroes.

And the entire design of the booth was the hero’s lair, and the whole pre-show campaign was social media, and it was all about hyping up the booth, and when they were going to meet together with the other superheroes, etc., etc.. It sounds a little corny. It was a knockout, a total knockout.

And I just keep thinking about opportunities when we get to think about the end user, when we get to think about the person on the floor or the customer at the store or whatever the case might be, the person at the museum, any opportunity for them to really feel like this story is about them. It is for them, and that it makes them feel very proud of who they are, that makes them feel like they really belong, and like the space has been customized just for them.

Liz: I do love that. And I think that, like you said, making people feel good is at the heart of it. And sometimes people at trade shows, it’s like the one time of year that they go, that they get out of the office or, or out of the clinic or out of the hospital. And so to give them a good brand experience, educate them on whatever your offerings are and make them feel good, make them feel like the hero, give them some praise and thanks is so impactful to those people.

Brenda: Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you’re having to really kind of break that down for a client that this is about, you know, the end user, that this is about the prospect and that we need to craft this experience in a way that is very welcoming and makes them feel like they’re a part of the story, that they belong?

Abby: Right, not about the product and the features of the product.

Brenda: Mm-hmm.

Liz: Yeah, it’s, it’s a challenge because they start most of them with the products and the features. And that’s important. And we need to know that. But we really have to hone in on sort of that overarching message and the what’s in it for them. And so we really, you know, kind of like I said at the beginning, we let them give us all of that, but then we sort of strong-arm them into the story we know they need to tell.

And once they hear it, you know, the first draft, they go, oh, wow, you know, you got all the product and feature stuff in there. But it’s not about that. And they see at that point, like, you know, it’s like light bulb goes off. Wow. Okay. So we can do both. We can talk about our products and its features, but we can do it with this thematic overlay or this journey that we’re taking them on or this just, you know, kind of exciting story that we’re telling. And oh yeah, the features and benefits are mixed in there too, but we’re not like whacking them over the head with it.

Abby: I’m thinking about the layers, as you just mentioned Liz, of storytelling. There’s obviously layers of ways to tell the story, and I feel like a lot of the best experiences include a human component. When I think about the Rembrandt Museum in Amsterdam, when I was there, they had somebody showing us how to do the printing press, and there was a person, a docent, showing us how to mix all of the, the paint colors and where their origins were and what they were made from.

And it was a lot of hands-on experiential learning, which were actually really brought the experience of visiting that museum to life for me, me and my family. And it reminded me how important this human component is. And so there’s such an essential role in a museum. And I know from my experience with the trade shows, having designed a number of booths, they’re really important when they’re telling the story for people at a trade show. Can you talk a little bit about that human component?

Liz: Yes, and it’s funny what you were just talking about made me think of something else, too, and they kind of go hand in hand. So, speaking about technology, just for another moment, one of the big advances in technology on the trade show floor has been through LED, and LED screens have brought beautiful canvases and immersive environments, and theatrical backdrops into booths that were never possible before.

You know, there’s always been a struggle with projection and holograms and things like this on trade show floors because of the ambient light, and with LED screens, there’s so much saturation of color and detail that you can turn a canvas into anything. And so that’s been really exciting and has provided a lot of amazing storytelling opportunities because now we can put a live presenter in front of one of these screens and we can change the scene 25 times.

We can have them move from their home to the doctor’s office to the hospital, to a car, and back home again. And they didn’t move, you know, five feet. But the wall around them, the LED screen behind them, the graphics behind them came to life and helped us tell that story. Speaking about professional actors, talent, in trade show booths, It is a tough sell, but usually once a brand sees it, they get it.

Again, these are just people, and if we want to have them really sit down and understand something, we need to humanize it. And what better way to do that than to put another human in front of them who can look them in the eye and get their reactions and feedback in real time and just talk to them and tell them a story.

And then on the flip side of it, it’s like you’re at a trade show, you see booth theaters. There’s, there’s 25, 50 booth theaters on this trade show floor. So, you know that there’s people that will sit down and watch a thing. So rather than be like everybody else, why don’t we create something different and more experiential and so that’s how we can kind of tip someone who’s maybe like part way there, like they’re open to a theater, but they’ve never done anything like that in their theater before.

And so, there’s just a range and it’s all about, you know, who’s the audience and who’s the brand and what’s the right fit and what’s the right balance. But if you can strike that right balance, it can make a huge impact. And people, once they kind of see that twinkle in the audience’s eye who are watching something that they definitely did not expect to experience on a trade show floor, it’s, it’s just awesome and so gratifying.

Brenda: We’re really curious to know, we’re talking so much about all of the great stuff and when things go really well and I’m really curious to hear about some of the, some of the worst things that you’ve seen, like Liz, what can go wrong?

Liz: Well, with a huge reliance on technology, there also comes a huge risk, right? So, I was speaking about beautiful LED screens. But when your whole story is is reliant on that, there’s definitely a risk involved in in something happening with the LED screens as an example.

Abby: Not that that ever happened to you of course, Liz, not that you’re drawing on any experience.

Brenda: Never happened!

Liz: Right? No, no!

Brenda: This was somebody else.

Liz: Exactly, I would say another example, it’s a little bit different, but we had a client come to us and they had an idea which they were all excited about to do, kind of like a game showy presentation, and it wasn’t the right audience and it kind of fell flat. And so, we were able to help them execute it. But once it came to life on the trade show floor, it was really not the right fit. And that was disappointing.

Oh, gosh, I mean, like I said, there’s so many things that can go wrong. We did a thing many years ago. We had kind of a live TV studio that was going on on the trade show floor in the center of this massive booth. And we had two professional presenters who were, they never, we never took a break. They were either always on together or one relieved the other. But it was constant for 10 hours, for five days straight. Well, of course, on like day three, one of them got food poisoning, which could totally happen to anyone. And so you’re like, oh my gosh, what do we do?

So luckily, you know, we had backup presenters in place, and we were able to have someone kind of get ready quickly and step in. But that’s what I say about the events industry. It’s like, you know, something’s going to go wrong. It always does. And if it doesn’t, you feel exceptionally lucky. So, you just have to always kind of be thinking about what are the two, three, four or five layers of things that could happen here.

Let’s, let’s try to plan for those and then when we get surprised by something that wasn’t one of those five, we’ll just deal with it in the moment. And that’s the beauty of us as event professionals is: we know how to, you know, work through those moments in the best way possible and come up with creative solutions.

Abby: And it keeps you fun. You clearly love it, and so…

Liz: Oh, definitely.

Abby: Right, it’s, it’s, it’s who you are. So, you chair the Future Leaders Committee serving the next generation of event professionals. So, what’s some advice you give young people coming into this industry, and what are you seeing that excites you about this generation, this next generation?

Liz: Wow. I’ll start with the second part of that. What excites me is that they’re not afraid to tell you what they think and, what they want and what they need.

Abby: I think, wait a minute, I think Brenda knows a little bit about that, teaching profession.

Brenda: Yeah, I’ve never experienced that.

Abby: No, no, no, not afraid.

Brenda: They’re a mystery.

Liz: It could be a challenge, but I appreciate it. It’s like, let’s just get to the point. I may not agree, and I may not be able to do all those things, but now I know what you need and what you want and what you care about, and that’s progress. So, I love that about them, and I think it’s refreshing, frankly.

I was just on a planning meeting today with our Future Leaders committee, and we’re talking about an upcoming event. And I just said to them, all right, if we were sitting in a room with the more experienced people in our industry and you could get on stage and educate them or share an insight with them, what would it be?

What do you want to tell, you know, the rest of us that have been in this industry for a while and some of their answers were really interesting and not at all what I expected, and I loved that. So, I’m just excited about, about that. And also, their creativity. I mean, they’re just thinking outside the box. They’re bringing new ideas.

They’re not afraid to, to bring new ideas. And I think it is so timely to have so many fresh faces in our industry. And I’m also surprised that there are so many people that are interested in our industry. I mean, we need a lot more. The future of our industry will require it, but there’s definitely some, some wonderful, you know, younger generation out there coming up into the ranks.

Abby: So, Liz, thank you for a unique glimpse into your world of events and sharing your experience in such a candid and honest way with us today.

Liz: Thank you. It was my pleasure. It was wonderful to talk with you both.

Brenda: It was wonderful talking with you.

Abby: It was. And thanks to everyone who tuned in today, if you like what you heard, subscribe for more entertaining episodes of Matters of Experience. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Live Marketing

EDPA

Future Leaders & WorkForce — EDPA.

Transcript

Abby: Matters of experience is a project of Lorem Ipsum, an experienced design company headquartered in New York City.
 

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a warm welcome to you and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, everyone. I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today we’re talking with Andrea Hadley-Johnson, who is an award winning creative producer and curator who currently works as the artistic program manager for the National Justice Museum, NJM, in Nottingham, England, developing exhibitions and creative interventions that explore ideas of crime, justice and injustice. Andrea, I love the description of your work as creative interventions, and I’m looking forward to this conversation. Welcome to our show.
 

Andrea: Thank you so, so much for inviting me. It’s a wonderful invitation.
 

Abby: So, Andrea, you and I share a similar background in some ways. We are both from England, but I know that we also share a little bit of a training background, you know, you trained as an artist at university, and so did I. So, tell us about the direction you took after training at college and how you ended up working in museums.

Andrea: So, I knew that I needed to do something creative, but when I left school, I really didn’t know what that might be. I studied textiles and fine art together for five years, actually, and felt like I’d found my tribe. I felt like I’d slotted in with people that were exploring and playing and experimenting. So, I left that course sort of full of ideas and passion for materials and processes, and I thought, that’s it, I’m an artist now, but it didn’t quite work out like that.

I sold a few little bits of work here and there and realized I didn’t know how to make a living as an artist. And I got poorer and hungrier and sort of stepped in intuitively to a job styling with a small interior design company and really a career of styling and interiors grew from there before my career change into museums many, many years after that.

Brenda: Andrea, in your museum life, when were you first exposed to human-centered design? Like how did you first start to include planning for people in the work that you’re doing?

Andrea: So, I have always worked openly. Always. I think people generally are a big part of my creative process. But it was about ten years ago that at Derby Museums, we began to remake the Silk Mill, which was an industrial museum that had been mothballed. And working alongside Hannah Fox, who was leading that program, we began to explore human-centered design, person-centered design, design thinking.

I don’t like really fixing and thingifying some of the processes because there’s a freedom in being able to understand that process and putting people at the heart of a project and standing and learning together what people might want to think, feel and do in a space or with a theme. But it is a human-centered design methodology that we began to learn together as a team, and it was it was an extraordinary process.

Brenda: So, was this just a natural part of how you think and operate, or was this something that you studied sort of more intentionally?
 

Andrea: I think there is a part of me that, as I sort of alluded to there, has always playfully explored and experimented with people. So, for me, part of any creative process is the what if, what if this happened instead? Or what if this person held it? Or what if? And intentionally human-centered design was put into the Museum of Making process so people out in the community were invited to come and remake the museum with us, and so that, that was a way of working that we could study and learn and improve to make that museum together with the people of Derby.

Abby: So, you studied art, you popped out, you tried to earn a living. It was super-duper tough. Where did you go next? And just talk a little bit about that experience and how you think it informs where you’re at now?

Andrea: Well, it was a tough time, 1989 was when I graduated and it was tough, but I’d seen a job advertised for recent graduates working for this independent entrepreneur. It was like a mini Conran shop in Nottingham. And we came together, a group of us that were creatives. Basically, it was working in that shop selling beautifully designed products for the home. So, it was an interior design store and I got to design some of the window displays and really enjoyed it and felt like that was an extension of my practice.

And then I moved into an organization called Habitat, I don’t know whether you know of Habitat.

Abby: Yeah, yeah, I know Habitat, I’m very familiar.

Andrea: Working in one store in Nottingham, and again, it was about experimenting with product, it was curating that store and I was promoted each year in that company. So, I worked across the region, I worked in projects in Italy and Iceland and France. And I got to a point in that career where I had loved it and I had all these incredible experiences and worked with people across Europe. It was wonderful. It was a real privilege to work there. But I wasn’t learning anything anymore and I literally got itchy fingers, as well. I wanted to be on the floor. I wanted to be with the products and the people that I wanted to be observing and watching how people navigate themselves around these beautiful environments.

So, I decided to go back to college. So, in my mid-thirties and I’d seen this link across to presenting products and presenting objects. And thought I would try my hand at museum studies. So, I did the course at Nottingham and to suddenly have to slow down and really read and think and analyze was a, was a different way of being for me. But I embraced it. I really loved it and I learned such a lot that I could see very clearly those parallels between my first career, you know, observing how people would pick something up and make sense of it in a gallery or a museum or a shop, you can see that those, those connections are very, very clear. What connects human beings with things in retail is not so different to what connects our heads, hearts, and hands in galleries and exhibitions.

Brenda: So, Andrea, I’ll have to say lovingly talks about hands, hearts, and minds of objects. And that’s how Andrea and I met. I got, a sort of an introduction to Andrea through the executive director of the Happy Museum Project in the UK. And Andrea, I think I was your very first Skype call ever.

Andrea: You were.

Brenda: I haunted Andrea. I got a hold of her, and I said, hello, I’m this lady in New York City. I do studies with objects, and I absolutely must come to the Derby Museums, which is where Andrea was at the time. And I said, please let me come and do a study. And Andrea was open arms, and we did some really brilliant work out there talking with people in the Derby Museum and Art Gallery about Objects of Love, which was a brilliant exhibit initiative that Andrea had created, where people were coming in, bringing objects that in one way or another represented love to them. And I got to interview the people and the meanings of the objects. It was absolutely brilliant. But that’s when Andrea and I met for the first time.

Andrea: Oh, that one was at the Museum and Art Gallery, and yeah, Brenda, it was amazing, actually, that week was amazing. And I have to say I met someone recently that was interviewed by you and the team, and she said she still thinks about that moment when she shared her object and you, and then seeing other people engaging with it because it was really special, really emotional for everybody, a really important piece of work.

So, it sat within the Objects of Love, Hope and Fear gallery, and that was the last project I led at Derby Museum. So, I was asked to redesign or reinvigorate the Victorian part of the museum using a collection of objects that had been looted and stolen from around the world and landed in the museum like they do. And it was quite terrifying really, because these amazing, interesting, important belongings had been in the museum store for many, many years, or decades.

And I was working for a short time with an artist called Sonia Barrett, and she was moved to tears in the museum store and said it was the first time of being in the museum where she’d seen objects that connect to her cultural heritage. So, I knew how sensitive this project would be and I really didn’t want to get it wrong. And I really wanted to work with as many people as I could openly to explore where the comfort, where the discomfort was.

So, I decided that a way to do it would be to call out, with a provocation, what three things connect people across the world. I think if I remember right, it was about three and a half thousand of these little cards and tweets came back and they were emotions and they were actions and they were behaviors. So, we started to play with these responses and build a thematic analysis on the gallery floor that people could come in and be part of that process.

And then the other thing was this desire not to get it wrong, really, to think, well, how might we share these objects before the gallery is developed with the people of the city? So, I took objects out on the streets, and I tried to connect the historic object with a contemporary counterpart. So, there were some ancient, I think they were Nigerian, combs that I took with a colleague to a barber shop. Sometimes we walked up to a cafe with bowls or utensils and sat in the cafe and people would come to us and say, what have you got there? And then we could, this interesting dialog would begin. But it was about listening and hearing what people’s thoughts and feelings were, rather than telling them what the object or the belonging was.

There was one really very beautiful example of an object being, where lived experience came in to identify what an object was. There’s a little basket that had been woven from reeds and a lid that had become disconnected from it in the museum store, and no one really knew what they were. And someone, this amazing man we were working with, he was volunteering, and he was seeking asylum in Derby at the time, and he looked at this little basket and he said, I know what that is, it’s a foraging basket and I would have used that. I used one similar when I was a child. He told us about how he used the basket and what he would have collected in it. And then we got this basket sent to a conservator and they analyzed the basket, and they found a tiny wing of an insect inside the basket and researched this insect, and it was only found in that part of the world where Empson had grown up. So, there was this wonderful mix of lived experience and an expert knowledge and research that collided in the most beautiful way.

Abby: Well, I know we have a lot to unpack there, Andrea, there was a lot that you hit on, a nd the first is that idea of collaboration, which seems so important, especially when you’re talking about all of these sensitive topics that I, I see you naturally migrate to. You have this very sort of open-ended creative process, you know, when it seems to come to the brainstorming or what forms the exhibition will actually take. Can you tell us the story, because when you just painted the picture of going into the community, that’s difficult. Can you tell us the story of when you went into the barber shop?

Brenda: And can you begin by explaining how it is that the museum allowed you to take a collection object outside of the museum and to the barber shop?
 

Andrea: Oh, yes.

Abby: You stole it, didn’t you, Andrea? It’s time for confession time.

Andrea: My pockets are full. Well, actually there was a really, that, a gallery that I had worked on for Derby Museums the year before, it was called Notice Nature Feel Joy, but again it was co-produced and it was a natural history gallery and I had wanted to not cover everything in, in acrylic or glass and had this really interesting conversation with a curator at the time who said, well, you can’t have those things without a case over the top.

And it was a tiger skull that I’d wanted to place. And we had this fantastic, and it stays with me, conversation where that person said, it’s people like you that will ruin these objects and then no one will ever get to see them in the future. Quite an extreme thing to level. But I started by saying how many tiger skulls are there in the region, in museums? And it was like, I don’t know, hundreds and hundreds, and I wanted to know if this one was really special and what would happen if someone took this skull every single day for a year? What would happen?

So that, actually that skull went on the wall and it was it was perfectly fine, and it wasn’t really a risk. The risk, I think, is not sharing the collection. That’s the risk. And building that relationship and enabling the team to feel like it was okay because some of the people that I was working with hadn’t worked like that before, therefore, they were fearful. So, to share the benefit and to celebrate the beautiful things that were beginning to happen was how I was able to influence objects leaving the museum.

So, the first object was a comb going to a barber shop. So, it was this beautiful wooden carved comb and I trotted off to a barber shop, dead excited, this is going to be amazing, and suddenly stopped at the door and thought, oh yeah, it’s all men, and I opened the door a little bit and I could hear voices and there was a lot of chat, but it didn’t understand the language or languages that were being spoken.

So then for me there was another fearful, oh, what if they tell me to leave? And I don’t understand that I’m not supposed to be there because we don’t share a language. What if I say something and the man inside don’t understand me? So, there’s this big flurry of, oh my goodness, what if I get it wrong? But took a step further, took a step further and actually sharing the objects was incredible.

And then someone new arrived and they identified and were very excited that they could recognize some carvings on the comb, and it was from Ethiopia, and we were invited back and got these beautiful photographs of the wooden combs next to contemporary combs, which sparked another idea, and that was to take some of these things into people’s homes to really explore how to un-other the way that people were looking at the objects before they went into their plinths and their vitrines, these ordinary, extraordinary or extraordinary ordinary belongings that had been in the museum sore. When they were placed in people’s hands and they were out in the community with similar objects from a different era, it absolutely cut through all of the, all of the nonsense that happens sometimes with museum objects.

Abby: Andrea, you’re so inspirational with the work you do and the way that I think you don’t realize how courageous and bold you are. It’s so charming that you went in there and without language to begin with, were able to explain. And how did it work? Did they come and actually visit the museum just out of interest?

Andrea: Oh, wow. Yeah. It was incredible to see then, along the way. So, what developed and again is quite iterative is the way that these galleries develop, one needs to, of course there are milestones and dates when things have to be complete, but absolutely within that we need to plan the room to play and to totally respond to what people are saying and doing and how they’re feeling in those spaces.

And the purpose for that originally, Objects of Love, for me was how might that strength of feeling and care that that people have for an object of their own, that the resonance that it has, is that something that could be translated across into a museum where people have that same level of connection.

People came in to help clean the objects and we started to hear people talking about their objects. So, each phase of the project, these beautifully cleaned and loved and careful things felt like they’d been re-ignited. And hearing people come back in and say, oh, where’s that small model boat that I cleaned, that’s mine, and observing people, bringing in family members to share, that was beautiful.

Brenda: And Andrea, I am remembering interviewing one of your curators at Derby about Objects of Love, and she was talking about her experiences throughout the galleries at the museum and she spoke with so much love and so much tenderness and so much gentleness about the objects. And she talked about their spirituality and how it is that they almost speak with her, and I just thought, you know, here’s somebody who really, really gets it. I hope that she was not a curator who ever gave you a hard time. But if it had been the case, she was completely converted.

Andrea: I think, I think that the hard time is good as well, isn’t it? When people challenge, it progresses things for the whole, for the whole organization and provocations, playful provocations, the what ifs, the how might wes, feel to me often that they’re magnetic. Once we start moving around or introduce prototyping or flipping things on their heads to see them through a different lens or from a different perspective, that’s when the really good stuff happens.

Abby: So, you mention un-othering the belongings a lot in your works to enable us to see them differently. I believe you have a really great story; we were talking about your recent exhibition. Is your exhibition called Darkness?

Andrea: Yeah.

Abby: So, this is at the National Justice Museum in Nottingham. Can you sort of talk us through that in relation to the fact that you, you see that engagement is absolutely necessary to connect with people via these provocations? Chat a little bit about the pistol.

Andrea: So, this project began about 18 months ago with this iconic photographer. His name’s Brian Griffin. He’s a super talent and his work is sort of infused with surrealism, I’d say. And Brian and I have worked together before, and he came up to Nottingham to explore the museum with me and we started to talk about some of the object collections, and we went into the museum store.

We were moving around and sort of got this long list of things that Brian perhaps would like to photograph. So, we had, I think there were 12 objects to select from. Brian has often worked with props, but these were the real deal. These were artifacts that had been used and they had a resonance around crime, law and punishment and the brutality of some of the stories that, or the connotations connected to those objects: brutality and trauma. And so, we did this call out for people to come and join the project, and they selected their object and people placed these objects on or around their body. And we ended up with this extraordinary – I think they’re extraordinary – sequence of 12, I’ve called them object person portraits.

And one of the objects in the collection was a pistol. Don’t know what year the pistol came into the museum collection, I think it was in the 1970s. It wasn’t necessarily a contemporary pistol. And right at this stage of installation, a colleague said, actually, I think that’s a safeguarding issue. And we, we can’t show some of them or all of them, and particularly the pistol because of gun crime emerging in the UK, you know, there’s been knife crime. It’s a serious issue. We’re a National Justice Museum, there’s some amazing work that the learning teams do with schools or young people that might be at risk of getting involved in knife crime. And it isn’t something that we’d mess around with.

We had those conversations. It was a very serious, within the play and within the experimentation. It matters. It really matters that we have those conversations. For me, it was censorship, and for me it was an issue around, well, what is the point of having that pistol in our collection if we can’t use it? So, yeah, it was a really big challenge and actually it, I had a real wobble about my practice at that point of yeah, working like this, working so openly, these fluid, meaningful, representative conversations that we have with people are so important and it’s, it’s constant, the dialog is constant, and we are responding. I am responding accordingly all the way through.

And then had some more conversations about, well, actually, if it’s a safeguarding issue for someone to see a photograph of the pistol with somebody in a non-provocative pose, then what is happening in the museum when people walk past the gallows and what is happening when people walk past repulsive things like a scold’s bridle that would have been placed over a woman’s head with a metal plate in her mouth to stop her speaking in medieval times.

If we look at that one image and that decision through that very rigorous process like we have, then we need to step back and look at the whole museum, thinking about trauma informed practice. But having seen the event launch and hearing what people said about it and hearing how it provoked new thoughts, it felt like the building was fizzing and popping with these incredible moments of ignition and connection.

Brenda: Andrea, you said once that, you know, if you’re going to be in the business of museums, that you need to see social justice as your business, as your responsibility. And I love how it is that you see museums as a critical point to bring relevant subjects together to bring social justice.

Andrea: Yeah, I suppose from my personal experience, my dad grew up in care in the, well he’s 80 this year, so he grew up in care from a baby to the age of about 16, and then at the end of that process he was street homeless. He didn’t have anywhere to go. He didn’t have anywhere to be. But he used to say to me, if you have a loaf of bread, you have enough to give half to somebody else. And this is this is a kind of mantra that he’d always have as I grew up.

And there’s something about the practice and the privilege. I have a privilege to be in the job that I’m in. It’s a privilege for me to be able to be with those things and develop those projects and to coach and develop and, and work beside all these amazing people, it is my responsibility to dismantle exclusive practice in order to, for that institution to become more inclusive.

You know, people talk about virtue signaling and performing inclusivity, but it’s got to be really, it’s got to happen, and it’s got to change. And it is a vital moment of agitation and flux. Post-COVID, there are opportunities to do things differently, and we have to just do them, not sit and talk about them. It doesn’t take very much to hop out onto the steps of the museum and have a conversation with people to test an idea. That isn’t courageous. That’s just about being a human being connecting with another human being.

What people say, what people offer, are the essential ingredients for the future of that collection. So, researchers in the future aren’t going to come back into the museum and see the same stories and the same people presenting as the most important. Equitable practice comes from tipping the status quo and actively dismantling the barriers. They don’t just dissolve. You have to get out there and do that.

Abby: Wow. Andrea, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us. As we discussed, it’s so important to give ideas time to shape, to trust your inner voice, and I know to be bold and thoughtful in our practices whilst breaking down these institutional barriers. It’s a lot to do, but as you said, rewarding work and kind of what we all signed up for. So, thank you so much, Andrea.

Andrea: Thank you so much. It’s been an absolute pleasure sharing and listening and being together. Thank you.

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. Please subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. Take care and see you all next time.

Brenda: Be well everyone.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

National Justice Museum

Derby Museums

Museum of Making | Derby Museums

Objects of Love, Hope and Fear: a World Collection – Derby Museums

Transcript

Abby: Matters of Experience is a project of Lorem Ipsum, an experience design company headquartered in New York City. 

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, hello and welcome. And to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in again and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: So today we’re talking, Brenda, about venues that are designed exclusively to tell digital immersive stories. You know, I think they’ve evolved a lot recently out of the success of the multiple Van Gogh exhibits, and they’ve had significant success and love or hate what you saw when you got there, they’ve really created an opportunity which marketers, entrepreneurs, technologists, experience designers like me are really excited to reproduce in many different forms.

So today we’re chatting with Brian Allen, who oversees the creation and development of unique themed content, as well as architects state-of-the-art technological systems and frameworks. Co-founding Illuminarium, Brian designed and built multi-sensory immersive venues and content. Through his work producing Emmy Award and Cannes Lion-winning creations, virtual and augmented reality applications as well as location-based experiences, Brian has become a visionary in the world of immersive. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian: Really happy to be here.

Brenda: Brian, you had a very unique upbringing. Can you tell us about your dad and how he introduced you to experiences?

Brian: My father was a set designer and a lighting designer, so at a very young age I was in a scenic shop. I was backstage in the theater constantly trying to figure out how things worked. And along these lines of experiences and seeing theatrical productions, seeing TV studios or being up in control booths, I was infinitely exposed to sort of how the sausage is made, so to speak, and it seems to have led me to my career and my drive to create and put on experiences for people, and that’s where I get the most joy.

Brenda

So, I’m really curious, Brian, something that you talk about is about how democratized the experiences are that you create. Can you tell us what you mean by that?

Brian: What we mean by democratizing experiences is not only access to experiences or accessibility of the experience, but I think it’s also about how you can be relatable to as many people as possible. It’s about giving people access and transporting people to places they may not be able to go or may not afford to go to. At Illuminarium, we used that tagline quite a bit, where we would put on shows that were revolving around a safari experience or a walk on the moon and create that emotion, create that memory for people to have a lasting effect.

Abby: So how did this whole technology side, you know, the digital side of the work come into your life, the dark side? When did that sort of like beckon?

Brian: It really started with photography and filmmaking, and I was immensely curious all the time. I took things apart. I learned how to work with my hands, which I think is crucial in this industry, in this business, and this sort of drive to understand how things worked. And after I graduated university, I ended up working at a production studio in New York called Radical Media.

And at that time we didn’t even use the word immersive. I think we called it experiential or experiential marketing, and brands would come to us with ideas and they didn’t want to just create commercials or TV spots or radio ads. They wanted experiences. They wanted a place where consumers could come and touch and feel and smell and interact with whatever product was being offered.

So, we started dreaming. We started dreaming really big. And if we didn’t know how to do something, we would just continue to research it. Trial and error, prototype things. And I think what it did more than teach me about technology was it taught me how to fail. And to me, that’s almost more important because technology is changing every single day, every single hour, and it’s almost more important to understand how to rapidly prototype something, and to get to the end product you have to go through many, many failures, you know, small and large. And so, I’m, it’s driven by this sort of endless curiosity about technology, experience, and creative.

Brenda: So, there’s a lot of human psychology in the work of advertising, connecting people with ideas and things through experiences and using emotion, curiosity, memory, these elements that you’ve been speaking about. What’s the overlap between your work in advertising and what it is that you’re doing here with these immersive environments?

Brian: You have to have this understanding of the human senses. You have to have the understanding of human emotion and how to sort of tease those things out by the way of pictures, video, lighting, scent, sound. You know, I think even before I was working in sort of immersive and location-based entertainment, we would always talk about, okay, well, what is this going to smell like?

What is this going to feel like? What happens when I walk up to it? And that’s really what’s going to drive your experience to the next level, bringing out as much of those thought-provoking, emotion-provoking elements within that experience.

Abby: Why do you think brands wanted to move into this area as opposed to stay where they were doing what they’re doing? Why is it such a powerful space to be in?

Brian: I think they’re beginning to realize that these things are much more powerful because I am physically there, I’m in-person, I’m with other people. It’s sort of a communal experience. It’s a shared experience. It’s something I can bring my partner or my friends to, and I can touch, I can feel, I can smell it. It’s sort of activating my senses beyond my sight and my hearing. That’s going to have a much more powerful impact to me than a 30-second spot.

Abby: So, when we talk about communal experiences, because I was just in a movie theater of all things, and despite loving being there with people, it’s often a double-edged sword. I’ll leave the listener to fill in the blank there.

Brenda: No, I want to hear more about this, Abby.

Abby: Let’s just say some people are about to have a fight. Some people kicking chairs, making too much noise. I was not involved with any of this raucous, but it was a little distracting from the film itself. So, how do you create successful communal experiences? Because I’m sure there’s some challenges.

Brian: To me, it’s all about setting the tone. We call it a palate cleanser. What is this sort of transitional space that’s going to allow you to sink in and be open to this experience? And I think of an experience if it’s powerful enough, if it has true spectacle within it, you’re able to kind of let things go, and you’re so in awe or so moved by what’s happening that you’re kind of, you know, maybe looking around and saying, did you just see that? Is it, are my eyes deceiving me? You have this sort of very emotional reaction with the people that you’re with, which is, in essence, sometimes more powerful than the creative itself.

Brenda: So, awe, as an experience, is pro-social. It’s really fascinating what happens with human beings when they are in nature, when they’re in something incredible like Illuminarium, the spaces that you create, it actually puts people in a perspective of wanting to, just like you were saying, have that did you just see that those experiences are very, very natural and you clearly tap into them beautifully.

Abby: I want to talk a little bit about Illuminarium. We’re talking about it sort of abstractly. Can you you know, just in a couple of words, Brian, describe its mission and what it’s trying to do.

Brian: Illuminarium is a projection based, immersive experience that plays out over two different spaces. At Illuminarium, we layer different technologies to sort of activate all of those senses. So, there’s a haptic system in the floor that generates low-frequency vibration. There’s a scent delivery system that every show has a signature scent. There is a spatial audio system that allows us to beamform audio, which, which essentially means I can place different sounds in the physical space without you having to wear any hardware or anything like that.

We sort of set out to almost give the illusion of reality to, to transport you to a different world, to a different environment. We also have an interactive system that’s sort of a person tracking system that allows us to activate or generate content depending on where you move in the space, which contrasted with maybe something like the Van Gogh experience, we sort of try to amp that up a little bit and use these various technologies on top of that to suspend your disbelief, right, to, to allow you to not realize that you’re in an air-conditioned building in Las Vegas or Atlanta. It was a really interesting format for us to work within. And I think it had challenges, right?

It’s really hard to have a beginning, middle, and end, a sort of linear narrative, when you can’t control someone’s attention. How can I have or convey a narrative, a storyline where there is, are characters and there’s things happening, no matter where I am in this space? I think it’s interesting from a storytelling standpoint in these types of formats, the sort of path that my mind goes down to take advantage of this opportunity is foundationally rooted in something like a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

I think about the use of interactive technology, the use of real-time technology, where it allows me to create content based off of somebody’s movement in real time. And that to me is really interesting because not only is it interactive, but it becomes personalized.

Brenda: Thinking about real-time and thinking about the nature of storytelling, I’m really curious to hear about the good old analog human being that you incorporate within the story. And I’m really curious if your people that you have in your experiences, are they storytellers themselves? Do you consider them storytellers or are they directional devices to help people follow the pattern and the flow? Are they scripted? Can you tell us a little bit more about how do you integrate in a seamless way a human being within this incredible technological spectacular?

Brian: So, there’s a smaller space in Illuminarium, and that’s where you meet your guide. And the guide is usually a human. So, another character of the story. So, in the space show, it’s an astronaut, and the human element is really important in that context because it sort of makes you feel connected to the content, right? So, you’re sort of like having this character break the fourth wall so that not everything is in the digital realm.

What we try and do is, you know, they have a script, but we often encourage these actors and actresses to add their own personal touch to these, these scripts. You know, there are certain things we have to hit, whether they be sort of, you know, rules and regulations. But even the rules and regulations are sort of branded within this story, right?

So, you know, don’t run and jump because there’s no gravity on the moon, which makes it a little more easier to hear and you almost start tricking people because they’re not necessarily hearing your safety procedures, but they’re being entered into this, into this story. You know, I view that person, that character, almost as this like shepherd through the narrative.

And I think it’s really important, no matter how digital and interactive and real-time, something becomes, you always have to have that sort of human element.

Abby: But is this now a beast you feel you have to satiate? Because it isn’t a museum or an institution linked to a specific mission. So how does this type of experience evolve, and who decides what’s next, what stories you’re going to tell, and how much is dictated by your, you know, your target audience and their interests?

Brian: In the first few experiences that we decided to create, we were thinking about experiences that had mass appeal. Experiences that worked in many different markets and that were timeless. It’s sort of akin to the early days of IMAX theater films where you have volcanoes and jungle and underwater, and they were saying, okay, we have this new camera technology, let’s just take it to someplace cool and push record, and we’ll see what we get.

And I think we’re in that sort of stage with this format where it is, you know, sort of in its infancy where how do we have an experience that is relatable to a lot of different age groups and different cultures, etc.? And then I look to sort of, okay, we’ve sort of done that and we have our sort of baseline experiences.

What I’m curious and interested in, is how do we take sort of existing IP that already maybe has a following, already has cultural significance, and create that world, you know, around the IP. So, I think of maybe the Stranger Things experience that was touring where they created an entire world out of a show or can I step into, you know, Picasso’s studio?

How do I sort of create those experiences, because I think they have a lot of emotion attached to them where people are experiencing this creative on one format that they’re really familiar with, and now they get to experience that in a format that they may have never seen before. But it’s this, it’s that sort of throughline of creative.

Abby: There’s a number of different companies, sort of like Illuminarium that are looking at monetizing this new immersive experience. And they’re looking at the square footage of the spaces, what’s ideal from that perspective and IP, is it worth the hundreds of thousands of dollars? You know, there’s a lot of unknowns, but a lot of potential on the flip side.

So, what do you think, Bryan, about the venue based immersion versus the traveling shows question, from a business perspective?

Brian: There’s pros and cons to each, right. So, I think the benefit of a traveling show is I can traverse many places in a short amount of time. I can set things up very quickly, and that could grow as a business, right? Cirque du Soleil has been doing it for years. You can have these very even technologically advanced and elaborate shows when you’re traveling.

The benefit of having a permanent location is you establish this brand presence, right? You have this facility, this place where people know if I go back to Illuminarium, I wonder what’s new, what’s playing next? Maybe that’s an event. Maybe that’s artists and DJs who are coming through town. We could host them Sometimes that was morning yoga sessions. Sometimes that was a new spectacle or a new addition to one of our spectacles. So you have this sort of evergreen nature to the, this sort of permanent aspect of that venue.

Brenda: I love the idea of how it is that this can by having these permanent sort of flagship places, if that’s the right word, can enable you to build community. I’m really curious about the nature of experience design writ large and how there’s so much of a journey of discovery going on right now. What excites you about what you see going on profession-wide and where you see our industry headed?

Brian: To me, what excites me are the people and companies who are trying to tackle the narrative question. We were talking about earlier how challenging it is to create narrative when you can’t control attention. How can I have someone come away from an hour long experience and felt like they just watched an Oscar winning film? The other thing that I am sort of really, really passionate about is the use of real-time and artificial intelligence systems to make things personalized, to make things evergreen, to allow this content to sort of change.

So, if I can have a single show that every time I come back, I not only leave an imprint of myself, but it’s a different show when I come back. And that to me is very, very interesting because it creates that sense of community, like you said, but it also has this sort of cultural center appeal to it, where I know that if I come back, I can, I can show someone, hey, that’s where I left last time this is, you know, whatever that is.

It’s a color palette. It’s a song. It’s a, you know, a character. That is interesting. How, how do we use these systems that are just now really coming to the mainstream culture when people talk about, you know, ChatGPT and DALL-E, those are interesting tools that we have as experience designers to now use within our creative.

Brenda: So, Brian, thinking about the visitor experience, what are the key differences between an object-rich venue designed for content compared with a space that has a more temporary digitally immersive experience inside of it? Do you think that not having physical exhibits or things to touch isn’t ideal, or is, you know, an equivalent kind of experience? How do you see objects and the lack of objects play into the nature of the connection that people are having with the story?

Brian: I think an experience that is object heavy or there is things to touch and interact with is always going to be my preference. I think that there is this grounded nature if I can touch things and and they have texture and they’re a part of the story versus something that’s purely digital, to me, I will always favor the first one. And I think if you’re going to have an experience that is leaning toward the digital side, you have to make up for it in story, in spectacle. But there is this, there’s the rooted connection of, you know, me being able to touch something.

I think back to one of the first sort of room scale VR experiences I ever did, which was put on by The Void. It was the sort of Ghostbusters experience where the digital world matched the physical world, but you couldn’t see that physical world. So, if there was a phone in the VR headset, there was a real phone that you could pick up. And I just remember being blown away by that because now you have this tool that you can texture and color your set however you want, but the object, the physical thing, the wind blowing, the, the smells, they’re all there, they’re all physical, which trick your brain into thinking whatever you saw on the screen was real. And that’s so important.

Abby: We have some listeners who want to know the brass tacks, like how much approximately does it cost to, like, create a space like Illuminarium, you know, and then to update it at all, because a lot of museums are, you know, they rely on donors and the government to keep open. And I know this is privately funded so quantify it for our listeners in some way.

Brian: So, I think there’s a spectrum to these things. And, you know, I think the I mean, let’s talk about the content creation. You know, you look at a blockbuster film cost $100 million or $200 million. We’re doing content for, you know, maybe 10% of that. And I think there’s still a spectrum between that where, you know, you don’t have to have these $10, $20, $30, $40 million budgets to create great content.

It is very expensive and the reason it’s very expensive is because of the sheer amount of real estate you have on your screen, right? So, that increases things like rendering costs, it increases capture costs, post-production, VFX work. Now, in terms of infrastructure, that’s totally scalable, right? You can do something on the Van Gogh side for $2, $3, $4 or $5 million and be able to travel that.

And sort of on the permanent scale side, you know, that’s, you know, in the realms of $10, $20, $30 million. It’s that classic, you know, audiophile question of well how much money do you have, how much do you want to spend? And then there’s a baseline. No matter how much technology you have and what projectors you have or whatnot, it’s always going to boil down to the content. It’s always going to boil down to how good is your story, how good is your narrative, and what do people feel when they come away.

Abby: Brian, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your thoughts on successful, technologically advanced experiences and reminding us how important a human is at the center of those.

Brenda: And the story, Abby, right? Brian, thank you so much. This was amazing. We really appreciate your time.

Brian: Thank you very much to you both. It was fantastic speaking with you. And I really appreciate your time.

Abby: If you like what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

Brenda: Bye bye, everyone.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a big hello and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re talking with my good friend, Cybelle Jones. Cybelle is CEO responsible for strategic leadership that fosters excellence in every aspect of SEGD. Before this, she was Principal and Executive Director of Gallagher & Associates. Cybelle studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati and helped establish the Masters of Exhibition Design program at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C.

Cybelle’s received so many awards and honors that we really don’t have time to list them all here. Cybelle, so sorry, but we just wanted to mention the American Institute of Architects Award of Excellence and that she has been a guest critic and speaker for organizations everywhere, including the V&A, American Alliance of Museums, Building Museums Symposium, International Council of Museums and the Fashion Institute of Technology. Oh my gosh. So, Cybelle, a huge welcome to the show.

Brenda: So, Cybelle, before you joined the Society for Experiential Graphic Design, you spearheaded a lot of the work that was coming out of Gallagher & Associates. Of all the projects, can you name a couple of your favorites and why do they stand out, looking back on them?

Cybelle: That’s an unfair question because I love all of my children. I can’t have a favorite. Being in the field of experience design for as long as I was was just phenomenal. I got to work with former presidents and Olympic athletes and Hollywood stars and civil rights activists, and even mobsters and spies. So, it’s hard to pick a favorite. I’m going to pick a couple that were transformative I think for me personally.

The first one was the first iteration of the International Spy Museum, which opened in Washington, D.C. and at the time that we were working on it, there was not a model of a museum that would be self-sustaining. Most museums at the time relied on philanthropy and government funding to keep their doors open and pay their staff. And we had a client and he said, why can’t we create a museum that is self-sustaining and is fun?

And so, we came up with this concept of building a spy museum in Washington, D.C., and I will tell you the honest truth, people were not excited about that. The museum industry did not want to even call a museum a museum for-profit because it seemed like that was the antithesis of what a museum as an institution should be. And the reputation was building as we were designing this project, that it would fail, that people would not go to it because in the city of Washington, D.C., where every almost every museum is free, why would you pay to go to a museum?

But from my role as the lead designer, I had a client who was not really a museum person, and he really pushed our team to say, if you could just think out of the box and reimagine a model of a museum that people wanted to go to, that were, that was really memorable, it was an experience, what would that look like? And the topic of spying hadn’t been done, like no one had done a museum on spying. So, it was so much fun. It might have been one of the projects where I had the most creative freedom to just think outside of the box.

That museum definitely stood out and there were nerve-wracking moments. We had a Washington Post article that came out before we opened that just was horrible.

Abby: Tell me a little bit about that part, being in the middle of the process and having everybody doubt your success and it sounds like actively work against the success of the Spy Museum. You must have had some self-doubts, knowing you were doing something fun, there must have been something in there, you know. How did the team, how did you deal with those, with those boundaries everyone was putting up for you?

Cybelle: The museum was going to open, there was, the money was invested, the building was leased. Anything great where you’re the underdog and you’re just driven to do the best possible job that you can do. And it was not until probably a month after the opening. I mean, people were like waiting in line even when we were under construction. I mean, I think the sex appeal of the International Spy Museum was very attractive to people. It was so different from anything else they had heard about. And I was doing the punch list, you know, after the project was open and I had a notepad, and some mom came up to me – and we actually, we did audience research, and the target audience for this museum was not families with kids, because we didn’t really think that they would spend the money, we thought it was more like the professional, like 30, 40-year-old professional that would be in Washington, D.C. for work. But there was a mom, and she had her seven-year-old daughter, and the little girl goes this is the best museum ever.

And her mom said, we’ve just spent four days at all the Smithsonians and, and my daughter just loves this. It’s so fun, but she’s learning and – those moments of pride where all of that doubt and anxiety and, you know, we were making a new model. It wasn’t perfect. There were a lot of things that didn’t work perfectly. But I think I’m proud to say people started waking up and saying, hey, maybe this whole thing of a museum actually being an experience, bring some of that energy to the three-dimensional world.

Brenda: Well, the Spy Museum, it’s a tremendous example, and I think a great, one of the great early examples of how to have multi-layer user experience occurring. You can basically visit the exhibition on your own terms, I guess is maybe the best way to put it. And so, it’s really well done. I’m glad that you pointed this out as a favorite, a favorite child of yours.

Cybelle: Yeah. Another project later in my career was similar in the sense that no one was really paying attention to this project. It was the Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Museum in Meridian, Mississippi, which you’re going to say, where is that? Look it up. It’s close to the border of Alabama. And even when I got this project, I wondered how it was going to go. Would these people actually ever raise the money to build a new, world-class museum in this little town of Meridian? And the architect and I started off not on the best foot. We’re very different backgrounds and political beliefs and, but we both believed that providing Mississippi with a world class institution that would celebrate those artists that were homegrown, like Oprah Winfrey and Leontyne Price, who was the first African-American opera singer to perform at the Met.

So, there are all these amazing individuals that came out of Mississippi who didn’t – they weren’t exposed to the arts growing up, and you kind of had to say to yourself, what is it? Is it something in the water here that, you know, you can grow up never going to an opera or a museum or not even being able to see Hollywood films, but then you have a James Earl Jones. So, it became a real passion of mine because I feel like museums oftentimes are only for the elite, and they should be for everyone.

And so, this was a bit of an experiment of how do you make art accessible to people that might not understand what art is, and particularly abstract art. And so, we, we took a really unique approach, but we also, building on the theatrics and immersion that I had been developing as a designer, we just wanted to take people to a place where they could kind of imagine seeing the world through the experiences of these artists before they were famous and what defined them.

I think one of the most memorable takeaways I had was when a high school group visited, and that high school group was from a very rural part of Mississippi, and they had never been to a museum before. They had never eaten out at a restaurant, and they said that they saw people in that museum that looked like them and that they could imagine themselves being. And it was transformative.

Brenda: I know the project in Mississippi. And one of the things that I think is really exciting is how much you and the team engaged the audience in determining how the exhibition could work best and welcome them best, and also really foster that sense of belonging that you were discussing.

Abby: Well, just building on that, actually, it’s really interesting in the two stories, the Spy Museum, and then down in Mississippi, you are acting as a mere filter in a way. You are deciding, it sounds Cybelle, as you are being immersed in these stories, for want of a better word, and you’re giving yourself time to get to the heart of the authenticity before you’re starting to do an interpretive plan, and this is what’s going to look like.

Brenda: I think, too, you operate as an ally, which is a necessary role of everybody who’s in our industry.

Cybelle: That’s interesting, Brenda. I hadn’t really thought about this, but when I was growing up, I moved 16 times by the time I was 13. You won’t believe it, but I was an incredibly shy child and I think that taught me to be a very good observer and to kind of read the room, read the culture, and be adaptable and empathetic. I don’t know why I’m having this aha moment on this podcast, but …

Abby: Well, we’re glad you’re having it with us, with friends.

Brenda: Yes.

Abby: This is a comfortable environment.

Cybelle: With friends, with these two amazing women. I think that’s how I treated, have always tried to treat my clients and my design team is that, that synergy, that collaboration – like for me, if I’m breathing, I’m collaborating. It’s like you’re going on a trip, and you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know where you’re staying that night, you don’t know what you’re going to eat, but you’re together, and you’re on a mission. And that’s where the magic happens.

Brenda: In a way, this is setting up a nice flow into the next question, which is – Abby, and I are really curious to hear about the idea of legacy, and as you were developing these projects in your years at Gallagher & Associates, how aware were you of the legacy that you were leaving behind?

Cybelle: I never thought about a legacy. I think I thought about a couple of things. One, I always wanted to make – I have three, three daughters – I always wanted to be a role model for my daughters in a sense of that you could do what you loved, and you could be good at it, but that meant you were going to have to work really hard and having had a pretty chaotic life and at times we had to be pretty scrappy, when I look at a project and the fees that they’re paying us and what that cost to build a museum, you really have to honor that this is a tremendous responsibility.

Museums might renovate once in someone, some curator’s, some director’s career. They’re going to put everything into that all their hours. They already have a job. Now they have to have the second job of working with us. That’s not really the job they’re used to doing and then, say if you work at the Smithsonian on a project that sees like 9, 10 million visitors a year.

So, to me, I don’t know that I ever thought about me personally. I don’t think I ever thought anybody would know my name or that I did anything because nobody knows who an exhibit designer is or even what they do. Hopefully that’s changing now, but I think what I was about was giving people an experience that’s going to spark something. The Maya Angelou quote, like, people will forget what you say and what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. And I felt that way about all my clients. You know, I had to give them the best.

And then also for my design team because you guys know, you work really hard as a designer. I mean, you put so many hours in and you live and breathe these. Like, even if you’re not working, you’re thinking about it in the shower or when you get up or over the weekend, and I needed to make it worth it to them. So, being genuine, a lot of laughter. I know you guys both do that. Like, just be sincere, you know, no B.S. Just try to do your best.

Abby: So when you look at sort of the business and the way that it evolved when you were designing, what were some of those major shifts you saw?

Cybelle: I started my career at George Sexton Associates, and we – I don’t know if you know George, he’s still designing – but we would do art exhibitions, and we were hand drawing, and we were building models. And my youngest daughter just graduated in design school from the University of Oregon. The things that she has to know now, the technical skills she has to have to be able to create photorealistic renderings, but not just the technical side. She has to have an understanding of accessibility, sensory education level, language. It’s a lot. You have to be a jack of all trades. So, I think from the designer side, that’s evolved a lot.

On the business side, that’s a good thing. We have to change. Things have to change. The way we tell stories, who we bring to the table, who we include in the process of designing, and what is the return on the experience. What is the return on the commitment, time, money on behalf of whoever that audience is.

Brenda: Let’s turn our focus to your latest challenge as CEO of SEGD. In some ways, this must be very different from your previous job. Is your work leading SEGD a really huge shift for you, and you know what’s similar and what’s different?

Cybelle: I think what’s the same is that it’s all about the people. It’s finding the best talent. It’s finding the best minds. You know, I have a very small team. I went from 150 people at Gallagher, and I have four people at SEGD, but I have all of you wonderful people that I collaborate with, right? The members, the speakers, the people that work on the education side. So, I think that that connectivity of bringing great minds together, that’s the same to me.

Abby: You are at the heart of this community. I mean, your ideas, from working with you, are innovative. You know how to engage with us, and really, you’ve grown our community incredibly, and it’s such a diverse community. You’re open to bringing in people from all different facets.

So, what was your initial mission when you first started, Cybelle, and how do you feel it’s changed over the years?

Cybelle: I believe that experience design is the field of practice to solve the problems of the future. Why, during COVID, would I go out of my house to go to an office, to, to eat out? It’s because of the experience that I can’t have at home by myself. And we, our community at SEGD, are curators of that. And we know how to do it so well, very differently from any other area of practice, right?

We understand how to bring people in. We know how to get them excited, or to calm them down or how to make a story come to life. And I always felt like when I sit on the plane and somebody would say, what do you do? I design museums. What? I didn’t know people did that. Yes. How are museums born? People have to design museums. So, it’s been a life passion of mine to get the word out.

The members of SEGD, the Global Design Award winners, the fellows are the best in the business. They are outstanding. They stand for design excellence. They stand for doing things the right way with the right process, with the right messages. And I just want to make our organization a model.

Brenda: Thinking about all of the different talent and the cross-disciplinary experts, the students, and the seasoned professionals that comprise SEGD, I’m curious, how do you capture such a breadth of individuals? Like is there a unifying approach that you know speaks to everyone, that pulls everybody together to form this unified community?

Cybelle: You have to celebrate the differences. It’s negotiating. It’s bringing everybody to the table at the same time. And guess what? Not everybody’s going to want the same thing. And that’s okay, right? What do we agree on? We agree on design excellence. We agree that we have to build a path for that next generation.

So, it’s really how I operate. I’ve always operated with a lot of caring, a lot of loving. We don’t use that word enough, a lot of joy. Hey, the world is not great, but we can really make a difference in the work that we do, and that’s unique about our field. I think I look for that. I have great resources of all these rock stars in the field, and they’re supportive, and they give their time, and – like the two of you, you both give a lot of your time, not just to do your jobs, but to help our field of practice and to bring other people up. Right? That’s also my job is, I want all of our members to be employed and I want them to have good projects, and I want them to feel proud about the work.

Brenda: So, in my role in exhibition and experience design at FIT, I know firsthand the level of dedication of SEGD to cultivating future design and industry leaders, and the organization plays this massive role in the mentorship, the nurturance, the support of the younger generation, and also individuals who are entering into the experience design profession from other professional backgrounds. And, but they’re new in many ways. Why is this critical? Why is it critical for SEGD to be providing its vital resources to cultivating this new talent, this future of design?

Cybelle: Well, we wouldn’t survive without it. We don’t understand the world in which this next generation is coming into. And so, there’s no way that we have the ability to do the right thing on behalf of some of our projects and clients. We need that next generation voice. They see the world differently than us. First of all, I don’t think they want to spend all their life just working. They understand about this concept of work-life balance, which the design industry has been really bad about.

But the other thing is that we have so much to give to them, and we have so much to opportunity to share what we’ve learned. I’ve talked to a lot of young women that have started their own business and they need someone to kind of bounce ideas off of and sometimes ask some really tactical questions, right.

And the other thing is not just the students. I mean, we all go through career transitions. When I went through this career transition, that was very hard for me. We’re all going to face some moments in our life, and we need support to get through that.

Abby: So, the big 5-0. it’s a mighty age, the semicentennial. A lot happens over that time period. Fashions change, technology changes. You have this incredible year with I know one of your big flagship events is going to be the annual conference in Washington, D.C. in late August. It’s coming up. I encourage everybody listening to go to the SEGD website – there will be a link on our page – and come, buy a ticket. It’s unbelievable. It will be phenomenal.

The theme is look both ways. So, Cybelle, tell us what it feels like for an organization to turn 50 and the idea of look both ways.

Cybelle: We are going to take our attendees on a journey we’re going to start with the founders and where we came from. We’re going to have amazing speakers like Llisa Demetrios, who is the granddaughter of Ray and Charles Eames. She runs the Eames Institute for Infinite Curiosity. And there’s so many trajectories that we can trace back to the Eames because they were one of the first truly interdisciplinary design firms.

So, we’re going to look at our heritage. We have Lance Wyman will be talking about his work in D.C., this kind of turning point of the government getting good design. But then we’re also going to ask people to reframe the conversation of how we go about doing what we do and who’s telling the stories and how are they telling them. And so, we have speakers talking about that. We’re going to be looking at can you do high-tech, high touch experiences and still have them be sustainable and green? So, we’re going to talk about that. And then our last day, we’re going to reignite. We’re going to celebrate our upcoming fellows, and we are going to ask our community; how do we take this call to action back? Super exciting. And guess what? Brenda and Abigail will be there.

Brenda: Wow.

Abby: They don’t need any other excuse.

Brenda: Hold onto your hats, everybody. So, you made mention of some trends. And what I think of is some of the critical conversations that are being addressed in our industry today. So, sustainability, there’s the nature of technology and user experience, new trends in innovative brand activations, audience research, and so on. What are you seeing out there?

Cybelle: First of all, I’m seeing our community as influencers and we go to a project, and we’re hired by a client and the client may have blindspots. They may not necessarily think that their project has to even touch on or talk about sustainability or neurodiversity or some of the not-so-good history points.

Our members, our leaders, our design leaders, they’re challenging that, and they’re saying, if you’re going to hire us, we’re going to change the process. We’re going to do the process in a way in which is going to get the outcome that should be for this institution or this brand. That is life-altering.

Our members understand how to do the process right. You’re teaching that Brenda, right? You’re not teaching your students just to have a beautiful end product. You ask them to explain what was their thesis and how did they follow through on that, and that in some ways I see is the biggest shift is the why. You as an experienced designer, whatever your area of expertise is, is it fabrication, is it graphic, have an ability to really inform rather than being just a passive doer.

Abby: I want to put you a bit on the spot because nobody really has a definitive correct answer to this. So, I’m thinking about the role –

Cybelle: Oh, great.

Brenda: It’s all on you, Cybelle.

Abby: You like those easy questions. I’m thinking about the role of AI. So, how do you think the role of AI is going to affect our profession? That’s what I meant by a big question, like, oh my gosh, that’s the drop-the-mic question.

Cybelle: Well, I mean, you’ve already been talking to me, and you know that I’m, I mostly tend to be an optimist, so I’m going to talk about the positive of AI. When we did the first Spy Museum, we wanted to put you in the role of being a spy, and RFID was just coming out as a technology, but we couldn’t afford it, and when we did the new Spy, we utilized RFID to track what you did, and it gamifies it, right, but it also could be related to your interest.

Then, one of my last projects I worked on was the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum. And that museum, we used it because if you’re in a wheelchair, we could customize the exhibits, the interactive exhibits for you because we know that you’re in a wheelchair. So, that information that we can know about a guest in any circumstance, whether that’s a museum, whether that’s environmental graphics, the intelligence to inform both the museum or the place to help take care of that person in a way, but also for them to get more curated content to their education level if their kid or their interest level is amazing.

So those are the pros, is that we’ll be able to make designed 3D environments more agile. That’s the problem with our industry. We are not agile. You build a branded environment, and the next year it’s obsolete because there’s a new technology, and that new technology the client can’t afford to update. So, I think AI will provide a lot of opportunities to create multiplicity of storytelling, learning, learning from audiences, how people move through airports, what are they seeing and what are they not seeing.

And then obvious things where we can automate. I find that a lot of our process in designing takes a lot of time. If we could automate more for prototyping and spend more time on the creativity. I don’t think it’s going to replace jobs. I think we’ll have new and different jobs. I would like to see us be more creative about problem-solving. We have big problems in the world to figure out and hopefully AI will maybe give us a leg up to be able to do that in a more expeditious way.

Abby: Well, Cybelle, we can’t thank you enough for sharing your experience, your positivity, and all these stories today, but most importantly, for inspiring us all every day to create these engaging, fun, sustainable work that can really make a difference in the world.

Brenda: Thank you, Cybelle.

Cybelle: My goodness. Can I just – I’d like to reverse this because the two of you model phenomenal qualities about sharing your knowledge. So, thank you, and maybe we’ll just have to continue the conversation at the conference, which everyone listening needs to attend.

Abby: Yes, they do.

Cybelle: Washington, D.C., August 23rd through 26 and this month, only, July of 2023, you can re-up your membership at SEGD. We’re giving a gift back to you for $50 off. So, what’s not to like about that?

Abby: That sounds like a win-win. Thank you, everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe to more episodes of Matters of Experience, wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure to leave a rating, a top, top review, and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

SEGD

International Spy Museum

Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience 

2023 SEGD 50th Anniversary Conference in Washington DC

Transcript

[Music]

Abby:

Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. Welcome back, all our regular listeners. Thanks for being here with us today. And if you’re new and enjoy today’s show, please subscribe. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda:

Hello, I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby:

So today we’re talking with Terry Snowball. Terry is the Museum Specialist in the Collections Management Department at the Smithsonian Institution, where he’s worked for over 26 years, a graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts. Terry has used his experience to help guide S.I. in their pursuit of Native American historical justice. Terry, welcome to the show.

Terry:

Thank you. It’s great to be here. Virtually. And I look forward to sharing my experiences and insights in terms of what I do here at the NMAI.

Abby:

To kick off, tell us sort of about the work you do with collections.

Terry:

Normally, when you go to a museum, anywhere, a small percentage of the collections are actually on display, the full balance so that it’s going to be in a storage facility and or kept in storage onsite or offsite at the museum. Where I work here in the Cultural Resource Center in Suitland, Maryland, we’re home to over 850,000 plus objects from the entire indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. And so there’s a lot entailed in terms of both carrying and preserving, also making upgrades in terms of their care.

Brenda:

Terry, the repatriation of objects, this is an increasing area of focus in the museum world, I would say very long overdue. And it’s very complex and sensitive work. Terry, You used to work with the repatriation of native objects. Can you share with the listeners what that would entail?

Terry:

Sure. One of the things that sort of happened, very important and or significantly in terms of the types of objects and or the importance of the objects, not only to museums and to the public, but also to the communities themselves, the tribes. Their objects and or their ritual practices were both outlawed and or taken away. And so repatriation happened along with the passing of the National Museum of the American Indian Act, to allow for tribes to come to the Smithsonian and primarily work with the National Museum of Natural History, which has Native American collections of human remains and cultural objects, and as well as the National Museum of American Indians.

And so in that there are five main categories that are basically affect the collections and or the means by which tribes can make claim for objects. The first, of course, being human remains that would have been collected and or excavated from different sites, funerary objects and then, of course, objects that were once previously considered communally owned, which are also considered objects of cultural patrimony, which means no one individual in a tribe or community can alienate that object or items from their community.

And then lastly, sacred objects, which are, of course, as the term applies, used and very important and significant ways in the practices of the traditions.

Abby:

What sort of conflict then, in your business as you’re trying to do the right thing and repatriate these objects, what are some of the trouble that it causes or the conflicting opinions or perspectives or groups that you encounter and how do you deal with it?

Terry:

Well, that’s a good question because it is very complicated in that sense. And one of the things from the outset in terms of the legislation, and I should mention that in while the NMAI Act established the Museum of the American Indian National is the American Indian with the Smithsonian, which now includes 19 museums and a zoo, it also, in that sense, you know, sort of presented the challenge in terms of how you interpret the law, I guess you could say.

So there are basically two forms of interpretation, I guess one could refer to, and that’s, there is a term or a standard which is called preponderance of evidence. And so a preponderance of evidence is a higher standard, say, as opposed to what the NMAI is, is which is a reasonable basis. So the higher the standard, I think in that sense, it’s harder to find agreement in terms of the type of information or record that is that is used or utilized, you know, sort of oral accounts in terms of its histories that maybe not admissible or permissive or even sort of given the same equity and say, an ethnographer or an archeologist or an anthropologist who’s, who’s esteemed or has expertise in that sense or, you know, from the standpoint of institutional standard.

Brenda:

I’m going to broaden their focus for a second and share with you that I just got back the other day from a special seminar that was focusing on the work of collections in state and local history museums. And I was in a boardroom with a dozen historians who were really deeply engaged in a really concerning conversation over the nature of collecting in various historical institutions and really this whole idea that there’s a problem with an almost hoarding-like mentality on behalf of historical collections institutions and the efforts to the excess and the efforts to repatriate, where appropriate, are deeply flawed or challenged.

And I’m really curious in terms of the way in which you’re working with collections now kind of across the board at NMAI. What are some of the current efforts that you’re engaged with? You know, are you having to do particularly difficult work or decision-making because of the, you know, incredible size of your collection? Or what are you finding in your daily work?

Terry:

Well, I think the challenge to most anything in that sense is sort of the decline of, you know, sort of the cultural stamina, you know, in terms of communities and groups where in that sense, that stamina is based on just how rich their culture is, what is still retained. Languages are constantly sort of in the threat of completely disappearing.

So I think in that sense, the challenge with most collections is to work with the vestiges of those and trying to enrich or replenish that information that’s critical to an object. So that is a challenge from the standpoint of having so much cultural material, but also sort of not really being capable of having that type of expertise available to you.

So we have to work with communities from that standpoint to help us enrich these collections to sort of valorize the meaning or context of these objects.

Brenda:

So you’re really collecting towards the mission of the institution, and it sounds like you’re really collecting towards telling the narrative, telling the story.

Terry:

Yes, very much so, because that’s part of our mission is to work with community. And one of the things that I think is really important for the NMAI is that, you know, we’re kind of a living museum we consider us a cultural institution. And so our mission is to work with communities. So in that sense, the things that we want to collect or to actively look for is not something from the past, because there’s there’s a lot of that here.

And like I said just before, you know, it’s important to enrich that. But the other part of it is that it’s very important to collect things correctly and appropriately in the sense of that, we’re collecting contemporary things by any number of artists that are about working traditionally and or in modern art.

Abby:

Terry, here you are, collecting wonderfully for the future from what’s currently contemporary and you feel needs to be preserved. What you collect now will quickly become the past. If every collection is only at any one moment displaying 2 to 5%. Isn’t it safe to say that a lot of what you’re collecting is sets, collecting dust? And it’s not important if nobody ever sees it.

And if you continue to keep collecting, even if it’s on mission and it goes in a warehouse and nobody’s seeing it, then there’s something, something vain about us all collecting things that we think are important and then putting them away and not showing them. So is there any importance and constantly reviewing the collection you’ve obtained and maybe sifting through and removing from that huge collection some things that have proved to not be of any interest to our communities over the last decade or century or half-century, however long a museum’s there?

Because just sitting there, it’s just like fine for everybody to say we paid a ton of money. It’s really important. Important for what? Sit in a corner, in a box.

Terry:

I think the question is, is not always the easiest one to answer in terms of sort of qualitatively or even quantitatively assess, you know, the spectrum of this material culture to say what, you know, what can be best done with this kind of material and or even individuals per se to sort of see how we can interpret them in the future.

And I should say that while we’re also open to and or giving access to native peoples, the collection is also being accessed by researchers who in a particular way or are similarly more at large in terms of developing and or refining information about larger or collections at large that are similar in those ways. And so there are things that kind of come in, and or there are trajectories that do take place in terms of saying that that’s giving resource to things.

But, you know, that’s an important thing from that standpoint, which I think one of the overtures that the Smithsonian is making and or has made is that it is interested in pursuing the route in terms of ethical return of objects and or things that have so great or significant cultural importance to people and communities. And so that similarly, going along those lines in terms of human remains.

So there’s a developing directive in terms of how that becomes a guiding policy for our institutions that are affected in terms of needing to be open to and or receive solicitations from people, individuals, or countries even to request the return of human remains and or significant cultural objects. And as of note, recently, too – our National Museum of African American has returned the Benin Bronzes and its collection.

And those are significant overtures from the standpoint of global impacts to say that we’re doing some of the right things with some of this important material.

Brenda:

I’m going to ask a question about the evocative nature of objects, and we know that objects can be very powerful in very numinous ways. They’re sources of inspiration and illumination, and people can have very transformative experiences, sometimes with evocative objects. Now, I know that you have had some transformative moments with collections objects, and Abby and I are hoping that you can maybe share a story with us.

Terry:

Sure. We’ve been since the pandemic has sort of eased off on things. We are receiving many more community of people. And so about a month or so ago, we received a delegation of people from communities, and none of it, which is in the Arctic range, is up north through the Arctic Studies program. And so they were housed at our facility in terms of working with those community members to provide access to some of the cultural materials that we had here.

Terry:

And there was a Nunavut elder that was accompanying them. And one of the things that are standard in terms of how we host and accommodate our community people is we have a ceremonial room that’s built into the facility that gets used by artists in terms of purification or cleansing prior to and after they come in and out of the collections, as well as forms of ceremonial treatment that might take place in that process.

And so this particular elder, well, we were going to escort down to a ceremonial room. And so we asked the question of what type of ceremony was that? Was it going to be entailed? People said that she was wanting to light this oil lamp, which oil lamps for the Nunavut has been used for a millennia where that’s basically lit and heated the homes in the Arctic, as you can imagine, is very cold. So in that moment, it kind of just took a risk in saying that to the objects that were held in a particular workroom could have benefited by having that ceremony or that imparting of the divine to take place right in the room with these objects. And so we all changed course.

And the lady proceeded to light the lamp, there were a couple of moments where we were holding our breath, hoping the sensors wouldn’t go off because of the smoke. But it was very minimal. But I think to transformative thing was in that sense is that we turned off all the lights that we could and in that moment was sort of saying words here, making, maybe making prayer, invoking the divine.

And these objects were sitting there in the dark with this lamp. And I think days of old, they could have been in those moments in those homes with these people feeling that light again. And I thought that was a very powerful thing for this to happen for her. And or for these objects.

Brenda:

That is stunning. And I love the visual of this mundane storeroom essentially being lit by something and being involved in such an ancient moment. And it just it just seems so completely appropriate in so many ways.

Abby:

Can you talk about what part of your job satisfies you and how you see yourself in your work?

Terry:

Well, when I first started as an intern up in New York at the research branch of the National Museum of American Indian, that was an early moment, early time for repatriation. And I should say that upon reflection, I think one of the important things that repatriation legislation and or those mandates did in terms of necessitating that museums and institutions and agencies work with tribes is that there were probably rare or fewer moments in the sense where museums would conduct themselves in that way to sort of customarily work with native peoples.

And so in that sense, that form of engagement that took place because in earlier times too, tribes would literally come to museums. They actually came to the NMAI and in those instances would ask for things that were on display and, you know, of course, be declined and turned away or discouraged from coming back. And so, you know, in that sense, it’s important for me from that standpoint to sort of, you know, help with the civil exchange that takes place from that standpoint.

Abby:

We were fortunate enough to create an exhibition. It was supposed to be a temporary exhibition, but was such a hit. It’s still touring up in the northern Arctic with the Nenets up there. And we were very apprehensive because we were making this exhibition for the local community, for the Nenets, and we felt very much ducks out of water.

So we did exactly what you what you’re discussing. We made it with them. So we went right in into the community to talk to them about everything, all walks of life. And they were with us every step of the way because we realized that the subtle nuances, even between the different tribes up there, were sometimes barely perceptible for our eyes.

It was like, Really, this is different. But to them it’s like, you know, left and right. So we needed them to guide us and help us with all of the content we were making. And at the end of it, one of the most amazing moments in my life so far is when it opened and we stood there apprehensively, showing them what we’d created.

And at the end of taking them around, they came over and said to us, Thank you so much for representing our life with integrity. And also we sort of given it a different perspective so that they could then reflect on who they were. It was an incredible moment and one of the highlights of my career to create that and then have it be so successful that they wanted to tour it so everybody could see it up there in the Arctic and the different groups could enjoy it as well. Was was kind of phenomenal.

Terry:

You know, one of the things that’s important from that standpoint is trust, and that’s the ultimate benefit in terms of working collaboratively with something and someone is that you actually learn something more about a situation or about a thing in terms of its true context and, you know, I mean, I guess that’s the distrust that we had spoken of earlier in terms of repatriation is that there was a lot of distrust because there’s just a history and or a legacy that is brought from the standpoint of how many times Native people have stood before non-native and had promises made to them. And of course, all those things sort of as expected or anticipated, never made sort of came to fruition for native peoples.

Brenda:

You know, I’m listening, and I’m thinking about a colleague of mine who was a curator in Western Australia for many years for a national museum there, and he, you know, was in his twenties and just starting out in the museum world. And his job was to quote, collect indigenous objects. And over many, many years, he collected upwards of 4000 stone tools.

Brenda:

Now, 40-plus years later, he has been fighting and fighting and fighting to try to repatriate. And he’s no longer with the institution and he has these profound feelings of guilt and shame and conflict, inner conflict that he’s been struggling with. And during COVID, he actually got special permission to be able to go visit the collections storeroom where all of these 4000 stone tools are.

Brenda:

And he went there to have a personal kind of a personal ceremony, a ritual period of time where he took out these thousands of stone tools and apologized and asked their forgiveness.

Terry:

Well, you know, I mean, maybe in the course of those collectings, he thought he was doing a good thing. And in some respects, it could have been, but in other respects, it could equally sort of contradicted and or defied, you know, so maybe the order or the ways in which Aboriginal people would have preferred to have things left in state.

And, you know, everything has some form of energy. And sure, I think, you know, I think that that’s sort of maybe a way to sort of acknowledge and or maybe make peace with that and making those apologies. One of the things my mother taught me was, was a prayer that I use on occasion to ask for forgiveness and touching and taking care of these things.

Brenda:

Terry, What would you want visitors at NMAI today to walk away with as a result of their encounters with the collections?

Terry:

One of the things that I think a lot of people believe or even aren’t aware of, that Native people are still alive or still thriving. So much of the culture that is taught in mainstream is such that it either also has minimized or reduced us to sort of caricature status or the state. So there are things in which we do look at the museum and or wish to share with peoples about who we are and our past.

Terry:

I think what a lot of people assume a national museum, American Indian is, is is about beads and feathers. And we’re not. We’re so much more. And so I think Hollywood is probably has given a greatest of service to our identities because of what they did and how we were portrayed. They wanted our romanticism, but they didn’t want us.

So, you know, there were these embellishments to these narratives that sort of remain as sort of not a stigma, but just sort of an alter the sort of alter ego or alter identity to who we really are.

Abby:

I’m so happy you mentioned Hollywood, Terry, because that’s what was bringing to mind. Which books should our listeners read to get a more realistic account? And also, is there any film where you feel a tribe or tribes are depicted correctly?

Terry:

Well, that’s tricky, I think, from that standpoint. But there was a gentleman who was First Nations from Canada who sort of documented his travels and journey to Hollywood to find the Indian, and made these various sort of journeys to places and things where, where those interpretations of native people and or and or even people assuming those identities.

The documentary is called Reel Injuns and Real is spelled R-E-E-L. And Injuns, of course, is somewhat of a derogatory term to, say, Injuns: I-N-J-U-N. Another book is by Dee Brown, which is a book called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. And so documents the account of the systematic destruction of American Indians.

But also, there is another gentleman. His name is Vine Deloria Jr, and he was, I think, from Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. And one of the books that he was known for was this book called Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. And that gave him national attention to Native American issues in the same year as the Alcatraz takeover during the Red Power Movement in the 70s 60s, with the American Indian Movement.

Abby:

Thank you so much, Terry, for sharing your experience and perspective with us today. It’s been enlightening chatting with you, and I feel like we can all sleep a little sounder knowing you’re one of the very valued custodians of our shared past, present, and future.

Terry:

So it’s been a pleasure, but I think it’s been too short a time because there’s so many stories and so many places we can go.

Abby:

And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, please subscribe for more entertaining episodes of Matters of Experience. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. See you next time. 

Brenda:

Bye bye.

Producer:

Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

The National Museum of the American Indian Cultural Resources Center

Yamalo — Nenets Autonomous Region

Reel Injun

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, psychology and innovation driving designed experiences. A big, hearty welcome to everyone listening. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re talking with Ed Rodley, an award winning experience designer who’s worked for over 25 years creating visitor focused projects for science, natural history and art museums, just to name a few. He’s co-founder and principal at The Experien—- ce Alchemists, an experience design firm serving cultural organizations both large and small. Prior to that, Ed was Associate Director of Integrated Media at the Peabody Essex Museum. He is a passionate believer in what Ed refers to as the informal learning that is at the heart of the visitor experience, which I’m really keen to hear more about today. Ed, welcome to the show.

Ed: Thank you so much for having me, Abby and Brenda.

Brenda: Ed, you began museums as an 11 year old volunteer, not very long ago. And over the years, you’ve done every front-of-house position possible. What first attracted you to museums and what were some of those first really critical jobs?

Ed: Oh, boy. I think probably the first thing that attracted me to museums was that museums offered to take me in, right, so when I when I started at the impossibly young age that you mentioned, there was a program being run by the Museum of Science in Boston where I grew up, where they would invite middle school students to come in and lead tours. Basically, we would walk kindergartners around the museum and read the labels to them. So, the reason that I got interested was not because I had a burning interest at age 11 in museums, but because the museum asked like, please come in. And once in, then obviously the hook was set, as it were. And I proceeded through, as you said, a lot of front-of-house jobs.I was a guard, I was a ticket taker. I worked in, you know, putting sharks’ teeth in bags in the store.

I didn’t even really think about museums as a career option until after college, even though by that time I’d been working in museums for over a decade. It’s as simple as just meeting the right person, which in my case was having lunch with the woman who was in charge of traveling exhibitions at the museum, who was complaining about how overworked and understaffed she was. And it was only really at that point at age, you know, whatever, 24, 25, that the light bulb went on in my head like, oh, wait a minute, people make the things that the museum is full of that people come to see. And that could be a job you could do, instead of being a ticket taker, like, huh, interesting.

Abby: And in terms of sort of the importance of a mentor, can you talk to us about how she mentored you?

Ed: I did not realize the great good fortune I had when I first got my first job in exhibits. The woman who hired me was of that generation of women who’d come up in museums when if you wanted to get ahead, you were basically either going to work in personnel or you were going to be like the executive secretary to the director. So, the idea that you could become a manager in your own right and have some power and authority was something that she had managed to achieve, I think pretty much through sheer dint of personality.

And she was determined that the next generation was not going to go through what she went through. So from the very, from the very get go, she really inculcated in me part of my responsibility as professional was to actually leave the profession better than I found it, which at the time I thought was just what bosses did. It seemed like a very logical boss thing, right? Oh, you’re going to set parameters for me and give me something inspirational to aspire to. And it was only after I had stopped working for her and had many other bosses that I was like, oh, oh, she was a mentor, and all these other ones are really just bosses.

Brenda: Man, I’ve got to say, I had a very similar story to yours where my very first boss, who is at Brooklyn Children’s Museum, all honest, he changed my life. And I knew at the ripe old age of 22 that museums were going to be the rest of my life. So, how is it that you went from there to where it is that you are today?

Ed: The usual, very non-linear path, I guess you could say. I gradually moved over the next many years into doing content development and exhibit development. And one of the shows that I worked on in the mid-nineties was a tiny little exhibit just trying to explain what the World Wide Web was, because I thought this is an interesting thing and it was a brand new technology at the time.

So, then I became the quote unquote computer guy, and that led me into thinking about digital engagement and that interest in the digital and particularly in the intersection of the digital and the physical is a thing that has just stayed with me ever since. And so that was, that was part of the motivation for moving into art museums, because strangely enough, they have much deeper experience thinking digitally than a lot of other museums because they were among the first crop in the sixties to really embrace what they called data processing back in the day.

That led up to the pandemic, and lots of people, including myself, losing their jobs and deciding that, well, you know, in the middle of a pandemic, this is a great time to start an experience design firm and try to do this kind of work for not just museums, but other kinds of clients as well.

Abby: Tell us about some of your adventures, like at Skywalker Ranch. You know, what was that like? Sorry, I love Star Wars, I’m not going to miss this opportunity.

Ed: You’re really just going to drag me into the mud on this thing.

Abby: I know, I totally am.

Ed: 11 years old, Star Wars. Okay. So, one of the other things I did at a very young age was ditch school one fine May day in 1977 to go see a movie that was playing at the, the biggest theater in Boston at the time, which was called Star Wars. And that began a lifelong love of the, of the movies and of the people who made them. One of the highlights of my career was we actually put together a proposal to do an exhibition that used Star Wars as a way to think about and look at new technologies that might be coming in the real world.

We would often run into the problem at the Museum of Science, where we would be thinking about how do you get people to visualize something that doesn’t exist yet, right, because your vision of the future and my vision of the future are probably going to look wildly different so there’s no common frame of reference. Really, without that kind of scaffolding, it’s hard to get people to move where you want them to. So, if we wanted to talk about cryogenically cooled superconducting magnetically levitated trains, right, that doesn’t mean anything to you, probably. If I say like, land speeder, people immediately have an image of what that is.

Abby: Oh, yeah.

Ed: And so we proposed to Lucasfilm that we use Star Wars, really not for Star Wars’ sake, but just as sort of a shorthand to get us to talk about stuff in the real world. This take was different enough that George was actually interested enough to say like, you know, sure, go ahead. Go work with these guys. So I did find myself in the situation of being a lifelong Star Wars dork, like driving up to the unmarked front gate of Skywalker Ranch to go talk to people at both Lucasfilm and Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound, and actually meeting the people who had made the things that had entranced me as a teenager back in 1977. And interestingly, with all of the real-world ­scientists and engineers we talked with, there were between them almost a universal similarity in that they’d all had that kind of experience with something, usually a pop culture reference. It might not have been Star Wars per se, but like you could almost, you could rank roboticists by were they the crop of people who went into robotics because they saw 2001: A Space Odyssey or because they saw Star Wars, which was fascinating.

Abby: I was going to say it’s fun when, you know, obviously you often have art imitating nature, but in this case, nature imitating art. And a lso that awesome use of a common language, using Star Wars to tell what were probably quite complex concepts and information is really awesome, and I think when designing museums, it’s a great example of sort of thinking differently, thinking outside the box, thinking about a different way to represent information that can connect with your visitors.–

Ed: Yes.

Brenda: Well, I’d like to bring us a few light years forward to present day. I know I’m hilarious. Right? As you’ve expanded over the years, you’ve observed that the visitor experience was not really very holistic. Has it changed since COVID? How have you helped make things more holistic for visitors and their experiences through some of your recent work?

Ed: One of my strange pet peeves as somebody who spent most of his professional life working in making exhibitions has always been how much less focus gets paid to everything that happens outside of the gallery doors, in museums in particular. The idea that the visit, quote unquote, to a museum is only the part that happens when you’re in the galleries where the stuff is, is really just not the way that people experience museums, right?

The visit is everything. The visit is deciding to go. It’s getting there. It’s parking, it’s walking through the front doors. It’s trying to decide what kind of ticket to buy. All of these things make or break the visit as much, if not more, than the actual content, which is kind of a difficult pill to swallow for somebody who’s interested in making the content.

I’m sure we’ve probably all had the experience of being at a cultural organization with somebody who didn’t want to be there, right? And they are the people who usually drive that experience because the least interested person is the person who’s going to decide when the group leaves. For me, experience design was a very neat way to take that desire to think more holistically about the work the museum does, and also frame it as a way that it was something that I could be part of.

You know, in my, my earliest days working in an exhibits department, you know, well the lobby, that’s not your business, that’s visitor services or the membership desk, you know, that’s not your business, that’s membership’s business. And the hallways belong to security and the garage belongs to the garage. And, you know, for visitors, they don’t make any of that fine distinction. It’s all the museum to them. And for us to take the mental model of the org chart and try to apply that to the visit is just really not helpful.

Abby: Yes. So you started to talk to us a little bit Ed about when you became a digital guy. From your perspective now, what does digital bring to the visitor experience in institutions, good and bad?

Ed: One of the things I think is the agency equation is much more sharply slanted in the visitor’s favor just because if it’s a thing that’s happening on your phone or some kind of device that is yours, you can put it down or you can turn it off or you can stick it in your pocket or your purse. Digital gives you at least the possibility of being much more selective about when you actually are trying to push stuff toward the visitor or when you’re asking them, when you’re using the pull mechanism of like, tell us what you want, and we’ll give it to you when you want it.

The example that I use to try to explain this is one from a museum I went to in Australia called the Museum of Old and New Art. It’s this absolutely crazy private museum in Hobart, Tasmania, literally the bottom of the planet, built by this internet gambling millionaire who amassed a giant collection and built this strange museum. And his whole organizational scheme was he loved art and he hated art museums and he didn’t want to make a museum that looked like a museum.

So, there’s no labels. Zero. All of the interpretation happens via a mobile device. And if you want to learn anything about any of the art, you have to actually look for it and seek it yourself rather than having it just pushed at you. And I wound up having probably one of the most transformative art museum experiences I’ve had because I didn’t have to have anything interfere with the visit that I didn’t want to have interfere with the visit.

There was a particular moment where I was standing in front of a painting and I was looking at it and thinking like, this looks kind of like a crappy Picasso. And having the realization that, like, I don’t like this painting and I look it up, and of course it is a Picasso. And if there had been a tombstone label there that said, you know, Picasso, Pablo, Spanish, active in France, 18, blah, blah, blah to 19, blah, blah, blah, I probably would not have had the ability to have that realization that I didn’t like this piece because everybody ==y knows Picasso is part of the Western art canon.

He’s, he’s a single name artist. Like, you can’t not like him, in the same way that I could like this thing that I had a direct encounter with without any kind of mediation, right, and that was a very important moment for me, just realizing like, oh, yeah, if you put these things out there like labels where everybody can see them all the time, even if you don’t look at them, they still affect your visit.

Brenda: I’d like to talk about really some of the work that you are, I believe, the most well-known for, which is digital immersion. So, you see immersion as the beginning of an experience, not the end all, be all of an exhibition experience or an environmental designed experience. So, build spaces like Meow Wolf or large scale digital environments that integrate built environment with VR and digital technologies.

These are spaces that you see as being rich with potential for visitors to engage deeply into content. Can you give us an example of the best that you’ve experienced so far? Like, what should we all be aiming for?

Ed: Well, one thing I would say is the, the one size fits all solution doesn’t exist. In terms of what makes a successful immersive experience. If you look at and I’m going to say a lot about immersive Van Gogh, which is not to say that I’m going to rain all over immersive Van Gogh, but they are useful exemplar because everybody has heard about it if they haven’t actually seen one of them.

If you go all the way back to the 1990s and people like Janet Murray in Hamlet on the Holodeck, she points out that the word immersion originally had a very specific meaning. The word immersion meant being dunked in water, like jumping into a pool, being baptized, going for a swim, and it’s that sensation of transitioning from one environment to another environment that is radically different enough that you are completely aware of the transition.

So, if you think of the moment after you’ve jumped in the pool, you become intensely aware of that environment and you’re trying to figure out, okay, how do I survive in this environment? In digital immersive environments, that same thing is happening, right? Normally in our default world, stuff isn’t moving on the floors and on the walls and on the ceiling, so when you leave the default world to enter one of these like immersive Van Gogh experiences, your brain does sort of the same thing. You’re trying to figure out like, okay, what are the new rules that apply here? The thing about immersive Van Gogh, that’s sort of a lost opportunity for most of them, I think is eventually that new environment becomes your default environment, right?-=

The immersion basically gives you a very short time span when people are really paying attention and therefore it becomes an opportunity for you to be able to leverage them to do anything else you want. But once that immersion effect wears off, oftentimes that will be the end. If there’s nothing else there, that’s why people get up, they go, okay, big pictures on the walls and ceiling, I get it. And they leave.

Brenda: Yeah, it’s all about the potential, and like you said, the missed opportunity.

Ed: Yeah. The Mexican director, Alejandro Iñárritu, created a VR experience a few years ago called CARNE y ARENA, which was ostensibly a VR experience designed to help people understand what it’s like to be a migrant trying to cross the southern border into the US. But it is actually something that manages to hit almost all of the necessary elements I think you need to have in order to particularly leverage the immersion aspect of what makes an engaging digital experience.

You go into a fairly industrial looking space where you have to take off your shoes and you get a little bit of onboarding about what’s going to happen to you. After you get your training, you get dumped into the center of the experience, which is basically a giant sandbox, literally, like it’s a large empty space with sand on the floor.

They have heat lamps going, so you have the goggles on at this point and you’re seeing a VR film of nighttime in the U.S. South somewhere, and there’s a group of migrants walking along in the dark and they have an encounter with the Border Patrol. You’re getting all of the immersion, you’re getting it reinforced kinesthetically, right? Your feet are actually crunching on sand. Your skin feels warm. And the story of what is happening to these people really takes that immersion and makes this thing an intensely emotionally evocative experience.

And at the end of all of this, there is actually a third space after that that is sort of like a traditional museum gallery where there are pictures of the actors who were in the thing that you just witnessed. Many, I think if not all of them, are actual migrants themselves, and they do a really, I think, delightful job of off boarding you. Right. Because one of the things that we know from psychology is that for intensely emotional experiences, you need time to process it. So, when the, when the learning actually happens is not when you’re experiencing it, it’s when you’re reflecting on that experience, like what just happened.

So, yes, it is an immersive experience, but it is really so much more than an immersive experience. And to shorten it down to just calling it immersive is kind of a disservice to what it’s trying to do.

Abby: It’s interesting the example you just gave, Ed, when I’m thinking about back to the idea of education versus entertainment discussion, I think back to one of my favorite teachers who brought history to life in school in such a really, truly entertaining way that I’ve still managed to remember some of the things he’s taught me to this very day, which is a kind of like small feat because I’ve forgotten almost everything I learned at school.

So for me, when I visit a museum like the Tenement Museum, we were talking to Annie Polland recently, you know, I’m learning, being immersed but also being entertained, it really sort of captured my imagination. So I just wanted to sort of get your thoughts on that balance.

Ed: So, one of the things that has been helpful to me has been to think about the visitor experience as someone who creates the experiences as being in sort of a host guest relationship. The most important thing I think an institution can do is display hospitality, which is getting at sort of your idea about comfort, right? What do you need to do as a good host to be hospitable for the people who are visiting you?

You need to make them feel comfortable. You need to tell them where the bathroom is in case they need to go to the bathroom. If they’re hungry, you need to feed them. And if there are other things going on, it’s really your job for them to have as successful an experience as possible. For me personally, is getting people to think of their audience not as demographic segments but as real people.

It’s very easy to talk about demographics, but it’s also very easy to decide to give up on demographics, where it’s much harder to do that to people. You can say like, Oh, well, you know, Spanish labels are too hard. We’re just not going to do it. But if you actually have a face or even, you know, just a user persona of an actual person representing this group, it’s a lot harder for people to be inhospitable.

And for me, that is sort of the thing I come back to all the time. Hospitality. What does it mean to lay out the welcome mat for people.

Brenda: So let’s talk about your work as an exhibition planner and as an experience planner. You’re a big believer in not being too precious and in doing things such as testing or formative evaluation, prototyping, recrafting. You’ve said that it can be freeing, and I know that from a designer perspective, this can take a lot of humility and a lot of willingness to let go, and that’s pretty tough stuff sometimes.

What are some of your experiences? Do you have any examples to share?

Ed: Certainly the first time I ever sat down with an interactive that I had worked on to watch visitors try unsuccessfully to use it is the kind of humbling experience I think everybody should have the opportunity to have. There’s nothing worse than sitting there with your clipboard watching people just, you know, trying again and again and again to do the thing that they’re trying to do and failing. Being able to take that and say like, okay, that’s not their problem.

That’s my problem. Like, I designed this thing wrong and we need to go back because I don’t want anyone to have the experience ever again. Having watched it. That’s the thing that can end somebody’s visit, right? You get one of these experiences where you’re, you’re trying and you’re trying and it’s just not working. And many, many times people will reflect it back on themselves because they have such great trust in cultural organizations. Like, the thought won’t even occur to many people that like, maybe it’s just a bad design. They will think, I’m stupid, I can’t figure this out.

Abby: I think, you’re talking about instinctive design, I think you’re, you’re dead right to be honest, when we’re designing interactives, it has to be familiar. I mean, we’re all using them all the time. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. And when we had a podcast with Sina Bahram who came on to talk about accessibility, and when you think about layering that on top as well and expectations for those visitors, has to be intuitive, has to be simple.

The design needs to be accessible for everybody. And I think it’s really interesting you mentioned ego, we also have a podcast on ego. I love that idea of interviewing for resiliency because you do, you’re right Ed, you have to be comfortable seeing your work changed by clients, changed by the team, and I think it’s definitely a tough early lesson for, for designers.

Ed: It’s not even an early lesson, I mean, there are, there’s still plenty of room for plenty of people to learn that lesson. When the Star Wars exhibition was finishing its ten year long intercontinental cruise around the planet, a couple of the people who had worked on the show, we’d all moved on by then, but somebody had said like, you know, Star Wars is wrapping up at its last venue in San Jose.

We should go see it on its last day. Three of us decided we were going to fly across the country and we went to see the exhibition on its very last day. And there was something very, very powerful about being there with something that you had brought into the world, seeing it out again on the way. And the very next day, you know, friends who were working at the museum sent me pictures on my phone of like the first load going into the dumpster. I was like, there’s 15 years of my career in the dumpster and, and, and that’s okay.

Abby: Wow. That is the best therapy, I think talking about letting go and ego or in this case, fear of the unknown. I want to turn our focus to AI, and how some of our tasks are being taken over by it. And that’s clearly unnerving for a whole lot of people, a whole lot of creative people, I’m thinking about writers, who are worried their jobs could be over. So, Ed, how do you feel about AI and do you think it’ll disturb the museum experience?

Ed: Whoa.

Abby: I know, I’m sorry.

Brenda: In five words or less. You may not use a chat to answer this question.

Ed: I’m going to take a big, long drink first. I’ve lived through enough technology trends to recognize the truth of the Gartner hype cycle. You guys familiar?

Brenda: No.

Ed: So Gartner, in their market research, realized that with technology trends, there tends to be this sort of parabolic curve that technologies follow where, at the top of that, that parabola, you know, everybody saying it’s going to change everything. And it’s the be all it’s all like, imagine, you know, VR for the last 20 years and then it gets to a point where it stops being novel and interesting and goes down the other way and sort of plummets to like, this is stupid.

It’s not living up to any of the hype. And then eventually it comes back up again to whatever place it really is meant to have in society. And with AI, clearly you’re seeing something that’s at the very top of its hype cycle. But we saw the same thing happen, I mean, I’m going to date myself now, although I already have, you know, computers and exhibits.

Are they going to ruin everything? Yes. Well, maybe not. Yeah, they’re kind of ruining everything. No, they’re just part of the, part of the tool kit that we use now and AI, I’m pretty sure is going to follow the same path. Is it going to put some people out of work? Definitely. I mean, every, every new technology has that kind of disruptive effect.

Abby: Mm hmm.

Brenda: Ed, we want to take a last opportunity to just ask you to tell us about the book that you are currently working on.

Ed: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I have been working for several years on a book on museum experience design that it currently has the working title Designing for Playful Engagement, and it is really an attempt to try to put a sort of a theoretical underpinning under the last 30 odd years of everything I’ve been doing, an opportunity to sort of walk people through what we actually know about how human beings engage with cultural experiences.

In terms of both the museum literature but also the scientific literature as a way, particularly around these new technologies, to not get stuck in the hype cycle, but really try to get into like what does neuroscience and psychology tell us about the usefulness of people being able to experience their emotions comfortably and who are, who are people out there who have done interesting things you can look at because we know museum people love case studies.

Abby: Thank you so much for joining us today, Ed, and sharing your quite candid answers to our pretty big, weighty questions and also for introducing Star Wars finally into one of our episodes. I’m really looking forward to reading your book since playful experiences and creating places to be emotional is so integral to our work, our design work at Loren Ipsum, so really looking forward to reading your book. Thank you.

Brenda: Sounds like a good one for my students as well. Godspeed, Ed. Thank you so much for joining us.

Ed: Thank you for having me. Being in the same company as people like Annie Polland and Sina, I feel like I’ve made the big times.

Abby: You’ve made it.

Brenda: You have.

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in. If you like what you heard, subscribe to more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. Make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

The Experience Alchemists

Star Wars | Where Science Meets Imagination Exhibit

Mona

CARNE y ARENA (Virtually present, Physically invisible) | On Tour

Gartner Hype Cycle Research Methodology

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores all the many facets of designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a big hello, and to our regular listeners, thanks for tuning in. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello everyone. I’m Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today we’re talking with Ellen Lupton. Ellen is a designer, writer and educator. Her books about graphic design include Thinking with Type, Design Is Storytelling and Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers. She teaches in the graphic design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and serves as the The Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair.

And she is curator emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum right here in New York City, where hopefully some of our listeners were lucky enough to see her show The Senses: Design Beyond Vision, which was fantastic, with over 65 design projects and more than 40 objects and installations to touch, hear and smell. Ellen, welcome to the show.

Ellen: Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Brenda: We are absolutely amazed at how versed you are in all things experience design, typography, multisensory design and of course, areas of psychology and perception. When we look at your vast and fascinating body of work, tell us how did you get into this profession in the first place? What are your own origins, and what have you brought with you?

Ellen: Well, all of my work really stems back to graphic design. I went to art school at the Cooper Union, where I studied art generally, but graphic design more specifically, and really everything I do comes out of that discipline, even though what I do with graphic design is much broader. I’ve become a writer, a curator, a speaker, educator. But the root of all that thinking is really in the art of visualizing language and communication.

Abby: And of course, your storytelling in design, which you so beautifully articulate in your book Design Is Storytelling.

Brenda: Absolutely. You know that by the way, Ellen is a favorite resource in my teaching. Listeners, Ellen brilliantly unpacks the elements of story structure and emotion and multisensory design, all with exhibition creators and users in mind. So, I have to give it a plug. It’s an amazing book.

Abby: So, you know, how is storytelling or let’s say, narrative experience a unifying theme, do you think, across the breadth of your work, Ellen?

Ellen: Well, if we think about design, almost all design has to function. It gets something done. It has a, you know, mechanical or user requirement component to it. But what makes design compelling to people is the element of sensation and emotion and surprise and beauty. And if we think about a story as having a plot, which is really the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, the facts of the story.

But when we talk about storytelling is how those nuts and bolts actually unfold for people. And that experience is temporal. It involves suspense and withholding and false leads, you know, all kinds of manipulations, right, of the mind. So I like to think about design as having that functional architecture but then this delicious, surprising flash of beauty and surprise and humor and sensory detail.

Abby: As you’re thinking about those storytelling points and how you want people to feel. There’s a lot of work that goes into making sure that you’re creating the right emotional response, right?

Ellen: None of it is easy, but it does become intuitive, just like storytelling for a writer becomes intuitive. We start to develop a vocabulary and a set of techniques or methods that seem to be effective.

Abby: And does it resonate with everybody across the board? Or have you noticed responses that surprised you? I’ve seen, for example, things where you thought people would be nervous or scared and they’ve acted in a very different way. So, you know, can you tell us about some of the reactions of the groups?

Ellen: Well, as a museum curator, that is a very humbling experience because we imagine people reading every word that we write and looking at every artifact that we have collected and looking at it in the order in which we intended, and the reality of museum work is that people make their own path through what you lay out in front of them. And so our goal can be to be as inclusive as possible and to consider the needs and interests of as many people as possible. But the reality is that each individual comes to it with their own desires and hang-ups and interests.

Brenda: Ellen, sensory design is a passion of yours at the moment. Can you tell us a little bit about what it is that you’re experimenting with, or what are you exploring at the moment?

Ellen: At the moment I’m actually more focused on typography. I’m finishing up my book Thinking with Type, third edition, which is very visually oriented. But if you think about how we talk about typography, there is certainly a sensory component to it. We talk about a typeface being warm or cool or being hard or soft, or blunt or spiky. And those are all tactile metaphors for what is really just ink on a page, right? We can’t really touch type. It isn’t really sharp. It’s not going to prick our fingers, we’re not going to stub our toes on it. But tactile language is so useful for people to describe what they see.

Abby: Talk to us a little bit about how you work with the different teams. Paint an honest picture, Ellen.

Ellen: Well, when I was a curator at Cooper Hewitt, we worked with wonderful big teams and the curator is really just one voice and is establishing the primary narrative, but we also collaborate with exhibition designers, with education staff who help to interpret the content and make it accessible to as many people as possible. A crew and a team of experts in museum construction who are very involved with the experience of visitors and the safety of visitors and the safety of objects. So it’s very much a big group effort. There are moments that feel lonely, and like you’re all by yourself. But then it very quickly becomes a big group project.

Abby: So something like The Senses then, was that your idea and your vision to start with, or was that brought outside into you?

Ellen: Yeah, that show was my idea. I co-curated it with my beloved colleague Andrea Lipps, and we had just completed together an exhibition about beauty, and when we were working on our exhibition on beauty, we, you know, had to contend with philosophically what is beauty? And one of the things that one keeps coming back to is sensory experience. And so together we thought, what if we did a whole exhibition just about the senses and not limiting it to beauty, but also function and communication, how the senses give us way more than, than beauty and pleasure. They provide us with the tools for survival.

One of the things that we did that was unique is really talk about sensory design in terms of accessibility. So not just, oh, it’s a fun experience, but how do we make this experience accessible to everyone, including people with sensory differences? And the book that we published with the exhibition is still in print and is a guide to sensory design that includes a lot of content about accessibility and how sensory design can be helpful for aging in place, for example, or for creating inclusive museum designs.

Abby: Have you seen then, I mean, thinking about your recent work that the industry has really changed, that exhibitions over the last 20 years, what would you say was some of the key changes that have happened?

Ellen: Well, museums are very interested in incorporating technology, both as an assist to, you know, illuminating traditional museum content, but also as a thing unto itself. Digital art, digital design, digital experience. Accessibility has become really important, has moved to the forefront of many museums. Agenda to make sure that all visitors are welcome, not just by meeting the codes of the ADA, but to actually create a welcoming experience once people are inside the museum. And that’s a learning that many museums are engaging in.

Abby: Actually, it’s funny you mention, like welcoming into the community. We actually created an app for Cooper Hewitt a little over a year and a bit ago, which was all about bringing the Smithsonian, Cooper Hewitt to the people on the streets, to people who didn’t feel welcome at the institution. How important was it to you in your work to create work that reached a new audience?

Ellen: It’s something that we, we aspire to. These audiences, however, have to want what we create and then we have to meet people, you know, where they are.

Abby: Do you think that maybe we should start listening more to the groups that we want to bring in and talking with them and creating a lot more of a sense of community?

Ellen: I do. I think many museums are engaging in that, and it’s, it’s a big job. It isn’t always what the staff is familiar with, right? It requires new skills, new people, new kinds of programs. And then sometimes those programs aren’t successful. You know, sometimes a museum will create something and imagine that the community will come rushing in and the community is still maybe not choosing to go to a museum as their first, you know, leisure activity. It’s tough. Museums have a long history of being intimidating exclusionary spaces, and that isn’t going to crumble overnight.

Abby: I was talking to Max Hollein over at the Met about the fact that they’re spending a lot of money on architects, millions and millions of dollars on three different wings with three different fantastic architects, and then they have their curators who’s going to make sure that all the right things are in there. And when I approached him and talked to him about, you know, experience design, what we do, just to be clear to all the listeners, what we do is we explain why the artifacts are interesting and try and connect with the visitor at a very base level so that they can understand history, enjoy history, have fun with history, and have a very informative and emotive experience in a museum. And he said, I should talk to the head of education, in my opinion, completely missing the point. You create exhibitions which are fantastic, immersive, multisensory. I don’t know how you manage to do it because you’re one of few people within the Smithsonian, I feel, successfully done that. How do you do that when it seems that the establishment doesn’t understand what you’re doing?

Ellen: One of the reasons museums are restrictive, uptight places is because stuff breaks if you touch it. You know, we have valuable things, things that it is our moral duty to protect for future generations. And so that means sometimes the museum is too dark or you can’t see things because there’s glass between you and the object. And you certainly can’t touch things. There just certain things about how museums exist that mitigate against the most inclusive, playful, freewheeling of experiences.

Abby: But isn’t that where technology or where very clever recreations or you could blow things up? Because I agree with you, some of these artifacts need to be preserved. That is definitely the responsibility of the museum. But alongside that, just thinking of other hands-on moments that people could have during their visit, just adding that layer of, as you said, designed storytelling so that the visitors could have a more connected experience and I think it’s very simple. I think it’s not difficult. It’s looking at moments throughout the exhibition where you can help enhance the story, I’ll call it. Beyond just looking with your eyes.

Ellen: Right, so you can create replicas of things that people can touch. There’s incredible work, my friend Steve Landau, who you might know, who does a lot of touch-based museum installations where you can touch an object that also speaks to you and explains what you’re touching, describes what you’re touching. This kind of supplement to artifacts is really great.

And then there’s exhibitions where there is no artifact, and it’s all about those kinds of experiences. But, you know, there are people that then question, is that authentic? The huge popularity of these Van Gogh projection exhibitions, you know, where it’s not the actual painting, it’s a light show. And yet people feel very invited to explore and sit on the floor and experience it at a different scale, experience something that they have some familiarity with. These experiences are extremely popular. Among museum professionals, there’s a lot of skepticism, you know, because it doesn’t seem scholarly and authentic.

Brenda: What’s your take, Ellen?

Ellen: I think it is really important to look at what people love and enjoy and to say, well, if we think there’s something missing there in terms of authenticity, how can we create an authentic experience that incorporates that level of enjoyment?

Abby: Yeah., I’m just thinking about what you’re saying because it’s putting an ultimate value on the authenticity of an object, in this case, let’s say a painting, and then it’s, again, really down to accessibility, because only if I have enough money to be able to travel to see all of Van Gogh’s in all the different places they are, am I truly having an authentic Van Gogh experience? I’m not sure that’s true. It’s a different experience., but sitting and looking at the work and not thinking about the brushstrokes because that’s what you get in person, right? You get the brush strokes, you get the scale of it, you get the intimacy, but you have it at a completely different scale, right? It’s all around you. You’re seeing it brought to life. So, you’re having a different sort of a relationship with the painting.

Ellen: Right, and the question is, is it less authentic? I’m not sure. So, the filmmaker, Peter Greenaway, has been making films of paintings projected inside architectural spaces, since way before the Van Gogh experience. Nobody questions are these authentic? They give us a filmmaker’s unique experience of great works of art that in a way allow us to see them better than we could in the environment where the original exists.

Because it brings us in close. It gives us details. It allows you to kind of enter into the painting. So I think there are like really great artists creating these digital interpretations of art that really become a work of art in and of themselves.

Abby: Peter Greenaway, goodness me, he’s a phenomenal film director, and you’re exactly right, and then who’s to say who’s an artist and who’s not an artist. But I guess that’s what the museum institution is built on and values, which is their knowledge, right, because it’s very important, you know, when it comes to antiquities and objects that they’re verified, that they’re showing us something that historians have approved of. This is genuine. This is real.

Brenda: But I’m thinking about the conversation we just had with Annie Polland at the Tenement Museum and the role of, in their example, the authentic environment with a number of authentic, if you will, objects: the wallpaper, and the linoleum on the floor and some stray objects that they were able to find during various excavations. And then also how they incorporate a lot of other objects that are from the same period that suit the same story that, you know, are really practically just like what would have been used by the family featured in the particular environment.

And yet, you know, the question of authenticity can also be a bit of a, you know, going down a rabbit hole because at the end of the day, you’re serving the story as I see it, and at the end of the day, you’re serving the visitor and bringing them into new ways of thinking, into new ideas, into a story, into an emotive experience, and having as much sensory-rich experience as possible. And I think there’s room for both, I guess is where I’m going.

Abby: Oh, Brenda, Brenda, right on the fence, as usual. She’s straight down the middle, not left, not right.

Brenda: I’m the Libra! Everybody needs to know that, yes, it’s true. I am a Libra, which means I am always going to see both sides.

Abby: I will add that last time I was in, looking at Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Oh, my goodness. Couldn’t get close. It was a complete Instagram moment. It was just a line of people taking that quick picture and that quick picture and that quick picture. So, I was trying to have a profound moment with Mona, but it didn’t quite work that way.

Brenda: Abby, Abby meets Mona.

Abby: Alright, so let’s talk about the role of media. You think that online exhibition experiences, especially during the pandemic, have been unsatisfying, but the programs and workshops did well. What do you see as the role of media and technology in experience design? Like how should it be used, and how should it not?

Ellen: Well, creating experiences for people during the pandemic online was huge. We did so much of it at Cooper Hewitt. I participated in so many events all around the world as an audience member, as a scholar, you know, in every way. It was really incredible. But those were, you know, lectures, programs, workshops. I did not find it satisfying to look at an online exhibition.

I think those might be useful to, you know, a college student writing a paper, you know, for me, doing research, wanting to know what other museums are doing, you know, what websites are super important, journalists writing about exhibitions. But I never found an online exhibition experience that was really satisfying. However, that opening up of the museum to these other kinds of programs was and is incredible and hugely expanding audience and reach and accessibility.

Brenda: Do you think the people are now seeking different kinds of experiences as a result of the pandemic, as a result of their Zoom experiences? Are you seeing a huge shift that’s been prompted now?

Ellen: One is there’s a backlash against all that online experience. So, lots of people don’t want to do things on Zoom anymore. Personally, I hate now speaking on Zoom. I don’t like doing Zoom talks. However, I would be heartbroken if all the institutions that sponsor events on Zoom stopped doing them because as an audience member, I crave the convenience. You know that I can go see something in San Francisco or London and be folding my laundry while I’m watching it is huge.

Brenda: Absolutely.

Abby: What do you think listeners should know about what’s happening in designed experiences right now? Can you share some of your thoughts about what you think’s working over the last few years from a design perspective and what’s not?

Ellen: I think when people go to a museum, they don’t really want to interact too much with like kiosks and touch screens, things where they have to learn how to use the equipment. I think what’s much more successful is highly intuitive experiences like projections or screens that are already playing where you don’t have to do anything to make it play.

I feel like those things are more successful. I certainly enjoy them more when I go to museums and I also just observe often these things kind of abandoned and people not really doing much with them. So I just, I feel that demanding less from people with technology is a plus.

Abby: What about comfort? Do you ever think about comfort?

Ellen: Absolutely. I think seating is really important. I think, you know, light levels, to the degree that it’s safe for objects is really important. I think availability of food nearby is very important. People get fatigued in exhibitions. And so providing rest is, is really crucial.

Abby: What about fatigue with words and reading? You know, what’s, what’s your take on too much text?

Ellen: I think some people really like to read. I know I do. In museums I read quite, quite a bit. And the thing about reading is you don’t have to do it if you don’t want. So I think some museums are too scared about having text available. I think people can decide for themselves how much to read.

Abby: What’s it like designing on a small budget, Ellen? What are the things that you have to take into consideration.

Ellen: I think what’s really essential to doing a beautiful exhibition is working with designers and not thinking that an exhibition is just putting together some cases and, you know, turning on the lights. And so designers are incredibly gifted at value engineering and at finding materials that will do the job for less. They also come up with visionary ideas that cost just too much. But designers are really key to creating experiences that are exciting and beautiful. We just can’t do it without them.

Abby: So how does that work? Say you’re working with a designer and they come up with a great vision. They know roughly your budget, but it’s it’s, as you mentioned, it’s just stretching it a bit too far. How would you, you know, wrangle that designer? How would you inspire that designer to sort of cut corners? What sort of conversations would you have with them?

Ellen: Disappointing ones, and I’m disappointed too. You know, when we can’t do things exactly to the, the vision of the designer it is, is disappointing. But you know, I think all creative work involves having a, having an idea and bringing it down to earth, you know, shaping it, reshaping it. And the restrictions aren’t just about money. They’re also about fire codes and safety of objects and touch distances, foot-candles and all kinds of things that are constraints on the museum environment.

Brenda: Well, I’m thinking back to the Cooper Hewitt, and I’m thinking of the Tools exhibition and an example that I think was tremendously elegant and so much time and attention had been put into the curation, the juxtaposition of objects and very elegant, clean displays that really enabled the objects, this incredible, intelligent and exciting creative breadth of objects really enabled them to shine and to tell the story. And if I recall correctly, there was not a lot of technology.

Ellen: Yeah, there was a machine involving sand and inscribing some pattern or data into sand. There is a huge screen of the surface of the sun that was very impressive. I mean, a screen is not terribly high-tech, but I like what your memory is, how clear and concise and kind of allowing the objects to shine.

Brenda: Yeah, I guess I’m just making an argument for simplicity and for the analog moments as well within an exhibition in that smart design is about using all of these tools and it’s about using technology and frankly, the expensive stuff when it really matters.

Abby: Ellen, as you look at your legacy and the challenges that you want to address in the future, because you’ve done a lot already. So I want to, I want to know what are you excited to do moving forward?

Ellen: I’m excited to write more, which is the ultimate multisensory experience. I mean, when we read fiction and non-fiction, we are transported into people’s minds and what they’re feeling and what they’re seeing. And we have feelings of tactility and sound and atmosphere. It’s just amazing. And it’s all done with no technology. And so, in this phase of my career, I left the Cooper Hewitt one year ago, I’m really just excited about being able to create things with less and to use the tools of language and visual communication in a, in a really simple way.

Abby: What’s interesting about the written word is, as you describe it, I think everybody probably has a very unique experience.

Ellen: Yes, we make our own pictures.

Brenda: I just really appreciate how pardon the pun, but we’ve got bookends here because we began talking about type and we began talking about text, and here we are yet again talking about your love affair, Ellen, with typography, with text, with the written word.

Ellen: Perfect.

Abby: I have just one last question. So, when you’re teaching graphic design, if you could tell your students one thing that they remember throughout their career, what would it be?

Ellen: Imagine the user. Imagine other people encountering your work. What will they make of it?

Abby: Thank you, Ellen. It’s been a lot of fun chatting with you today about your work, your books, and all of our senses. Thank you so much for joining us.

Brenda: Thank you, Ellen.

Ellen: Thanks for having me. I really had fun.

Abby: And thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience. Please make sure to leave a rating and a review and share with a friend. We’ll see you next time.

[Music]

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Ellen Lupton

The Senses: Design Beyond Vision | Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum – Lorem Ipsum Corp

Touch Graphics

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new, a warm welcome, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in and supporting our conversation. My name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello everyone. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today we’re talking with Mike McCarthy, who is the VP of Design Communications Ltd., fondly referred to by most of us as DCL, who build really amazing architectural specialty products. DCL’s clients are designers and developers involved in large scale new construction and renovations of things like sports stadiums, theme parks, shopping malls, basically big infrastructure and some really cool places to hang out. Mike’s been involved in thousands of projects over his 20 plus year career, including, and this is a really impressive flex Mike, works at Walt Disney World, SoFi Stadium, TD Garden, Madison Square Garden, Gillette Stadium, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Hasbro and many, many others.

Brenda: That should have a soundtrack. can I just say, that should have like trumpets sort of layering behind it.

Abby: I think it’d take the entire podcast to list it all out.

Mike: I would like that.

Abby: Yeah. Yeah, he really would. I can imagine. Mike’s also on the board of directors and executive committee of SEGD, and for those listening who may not be aware of this association, it’s the Society of Experiential Graphic Design, which I’m also a member. It has members from across our industry and I recommend everyone to really consider joining. Lastly, he serves on the board of directors of the Massachusetts Business Roundtable and he has a family, and I think my question really should be, Mike, how do you fit it all in?

Mike: Well, it’s all a labor of love. So, I’m lucky and I’m grateful to be here with you both today. Thank you for having me.

Brenda: Well, I’m going to get us kickstarted by talking about everybody’s favorite topic, COVID. Because you have such a broad scope of the industry, what are you seeing evolving in the workplace since COVID? What’s changing?

Mike: Well, first of all, I will point out that COVID is actually not my favorite subject.

Brenda: Fair enough.

Mike: So, we make things for places that people go, so to have sort of a global crisis where people are not allowed to go places, not good. So, I’m glad that is dissipating, let’s put it that way.

You know what I’m certainly seeing in the post-COVID world, people trying to figure out their corporate space. Right. I think everybody’s grappling with, you know, are we doing a back in the office thing? Are we doing a work from home thing or are we doing a hybrid? You know, maybe somebody signed a lease on a big giant space with one mindset ten years ago, and. and they’re really unsure if that’s going to be the same moving forward.

I’m seeing a lot of corporations and heads of corporations trying to figure that out and say, how can we, how can we do this? And if we are going to create a space that we can sort of compete for talent, which is the other big thing right now, right, is, is competing for talent and getting people towork at your place versus another. How can we make those spaces some place that people want to be?

Abby: So, you know, you have also built a really diverse range of incredible spaces and just thinking about how things evolve, you know, what are they looking to add to these spaces over time?

Mike: I think especially with the COVID break or in some ways, if you look at it, it’s almost like a warp in time where all of a sudden, it might be seven years since they updated their space, right? COVID might have been three of those, but nonetheless, all of a sudden you think, wow, it’s been a decade since we put this and or did that. And I think there are a lot of places that are looking to add technology because they see these really exciting areas that have it and they say, hey, we don’t want to get left behind and we want to look like we’re cutting edge and we want to be cutting edge.

Not to mention when you’re dealing with technology, be it LED or projection mapping or whatever, it offers you a chance to do things that sometimes static environments can’t. Right? We can update that information. We can tell a different story. We can use it to inform people and, and inspire people and tell our story and in all those different things. And so, I think that there is definitely a push to technology for anyone who wants to update and stay current and look at a different way to communicate with the people that are using that space.

Abby: How sort of well-thought through is it when some of your clients are coming to you saying we want, want technology? Are they thinking about what that could actually look like in space, how it would work? Because, you know, in my experience, we’ve had a lot of situations where a client would want technology but then haven’t really thought through the application of that and the longevity.

Mike: And it runs the gamut, and so there are people who have figured everything out, here’s what we want to do and here’s how we want to do it. And all you need to do is tell me, you know, where can I get this one screen? And then there’s people who say, what if it like lit up, but also like was like a movie?

Abby: Right.

Mike: Ok, well that, that’s a big scope, and, you know, how can we sort of help figure that out? Now, the one thing we don’t do, we build, we engineer, we project, manage, we install, we do all those things, but the one thing that we don’t do, is we don’t design. A lot of times people reach out to us and say, hey, we want to add technology, we want to do all these things. How can we do that? And the first thing we’ll do is say, okay, well, you need to team up with someone who’s going to help you design this and help tell your story or help you even figure out where you want to be.

And through that, there’s so many interesting things that they can do. They can tell their story as we see so many times, like, here’s the history of our company or whatever it is, or they can go in a completely different direction and use it for public art. We’re seeing that a lot, too, where people are saying, hey, I have this space. We’re going to put a big multimedia installation here, but we really want to use it to promote art and promote the community. I think that in the post-pandemic world, that connection to community is so huge. But even that is maybe more complicated than we’re thinking, right?

Abby: Yeah.

Mike: Because with every media there are restrictions, and you all know this well, there’s restrictions to what you can accept, how big does a file need to be, what, how do we upload it. All those different things, and we will work with partners who will sort of help them through that process.

Abby: There’s that piece to it though, which is once the, the portal, the monitor, the project, whatever is holding the content is up, it’s like a beast that needs to be fed. It’s not good enough often to just have a short term plan. How is that going to evolve? How is it going to change? How is it going to continue to have that dialog with the visitor?

You know, just thinking about the fantastic idea of showing and displaying the work of local artists, you still need a curator. You need somebody who’s going to be there and facilitating the work that goes up there. And I often find that that’s not been accounted for by the client and something that you need to bring up soon because the best laid plans can go awry and make sure that they understand the commitment to, to the content.

Brenda: Mike, how much are places mimicking, wanting to mimic other places? How often do you have somebody come up and say, you know, I just, I was over at Joe’s place and they’re doing, you know, X, Y and Z. I want the exact same thing. Are you getting that a lot?

Mike: Yeah. Yeah.

Brenda: Tell us more.

Mike: Yeah. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right? I mean, they see something and they liked it and say, I want to do exactly that. Okay, well, you know, maybe not exactly that, but how could we use a similar concept to work with your space and in your story and, and so forth?

Brenda: Mike, we’ve talked about media and technology. Given your scope of work, you must be seeing some more big trends across the various industries. Can you fill us in? What are you seeing out there?

Mike: Yeah, I see, kind of going back to that theory of people wanting to inspire, and I think that people are trying to be more socially conscious. So even if they’re saying, okay, well, we’re going to tell our story, they want to do it in a way that shows who they are and what their values are. Right? It isn’t just we’re the best, we do this. Why are we doing it? What is the, you know, what’s the purpose of our, our organization, what’s our mission? And so you’re seeing more mission statements. You’re seeing more organizations try to explain who they are and what they do and why they do it.

Abby: We’re seeing that completely, too. So, when you talk about, let’s focus on, on when you want to be invited to the table, because I know it’s not always at the ideal time, sometimes you get that last minute panicked phone call like help.

Mike: Sometimes.

Brenda: Fix this! Quick!

Abby: When do you need to come into the process?

Mike: Earlier is better, and speaking not only for, for DCL, but all fabricators, you know, I think they would all say earlier is better because sometimes if we’re talking with a designer and a client, we can help steer in the right direction.

Abby: Can you give us some examples so people can understand how you can actually help us?

Brenda: Bring us into your world, Mike.

Mike: Yeah, sure. So budget, right? So, we’re thinking, okay, well everybody has a budget of some type and so a fabricator may be able to say, all right, look, if you get us in early, we can take a look at what you’re going for and kind of recommend cost effective ways to fabricate that, that are going to stay within your budget. Right, and many, many times for us, we would rather get in early and say, okay, well, what is the budget? The budget is X, let’s work till that, rather than say, here’s what I want, tell me what your bid is, and, you know, we and others come in at two x, three, x four, x, whatever it is, and and somebody says, no, you got to cut that down. Cut that down to what? I don’t know, but it has to be less.

That, that can sometimes spin a lot of wheels, right. And you can spend a lot of time doing that. And for a designer client, you know, the design firm themselves, they can burn their budget in that process because they too have taken on the work and have hourly rates they have to pay, and that’s how they do their budgeting, and so they don’t want to burn their time on that. And so if they bring somebody in like us early, they can sort of go through that and say, okay, well, how could we chart this course together to get to this particular finish line of the budget and of the schedule and of whatever that constraint is?

Abby: Can you think of some, don’t mean to put you on the spot, Mike, but can you think of some instances not naming any names or a design to build something out of aluminum and you had to make it out of wood or vice versa, like some sort of tangible example.

Mike: We love aluminum, so it’s very rare that we’d be talking anybody out of aluminum that’s our best friend.

Abby: So, you understood when I said, did I say aluminum?

Mike: Well, I went to, I very quickly, I went to Google Translate and it came out as aluminum.

Brenda: Looked up English English.

Mike: So I’m like, oh, that’s what it is. But, yeah, and so with different metals, maybe, that’s a good example, right? They may say, oh, we want it to be titanium or we want it to be this or that and, and that can be very expensive. And we said, okay, well, here’s a finish that we can do out of maybe a painted aluminum or, or maybe a stainless steel or whatever it is. And many times we may say, hey, this method might be more cost efficient, but it also might be more durable. And that’s, that’s a big thing. Durability is something that I think not everybody thinks about but is a big deal.

Brenda: I have a question about the elements of the good fabricator relationship. What are the essential elements that folks should know for making things work well?

Mike: Trust, right? And that takes a while to build. Your only going to have trust if you’ve done a few projects together and you’ve been through a couple of things and, and anyone who’s in the construction field knows that construction does not always go to plan and we’re going to make mistakes and the designer is going to make mistakes and the owner is going to make mistakes and everybody’s going to make mistakes. The question is, how do you respond to those mistakes? Did they stand by their work? Did they say, yeah, we will fix it, we know about this? Did they try to hide problems?

You know, for a fabricator, they’re going to be looking for somebody who wants to have a long-term partnership with them and wants to get them involved in projects early on. One of the things that we always talk to our estimators about is you can’t just constantly price things with people, right? So, if you say, oh, I’m going to get three prices and I know, you know, company, company B and company C are going to be way too high, but I’m going to have them price it anyhow. All right. Well, that’s the that’s a process for them, and that takes them time and that costs them money. And eventually, if they say, look, I’ve priced 40 things for you and I’ve never gotten one, like, thanks, but I really don’t want to be your third price, so you can say, oh God, they’re always too high. A fabricator or vendor or supplier of any type is going to want a relationship that they have with anyone to be fruitful for them too.

Abby: Do you, you know, we often say that if we’ve done our job well, our work goes unnoticed. You know, if that’s great lighting, nobody notices the great lighting or if it’s fantastically designed or the typography, the wayfinding, if it all works together, then the visitor just goes away having had an amazing experience. Do you sometimes feel that the fabricators are truly like the unsung heroes?

Mike: I certainly think we don’t get enough thanks. I mean, there has rarely been a parade, any sort of fanfare like that. I mean, I don’t think, it wouldn’t have to be a big parade, but like a couple thousand people, I don’t think would be out of the question.

Brenda: A few thousand.

Mike: Yeah, you know, I think we’re I think we’re the same. Right. I think if all goes well, no one’s thinking about it. A lot of times when we meet people, even if we’re hiring, people will say, oh, I never even stopped to think about how this stuff was built or that anybody built it or made it, which sounds crazy, but it’s true, right? You think, oh, wow, someone’s making this. Someone did that, and, and that’s true of everything. Somebody makes doors. Somebody makes windows, right? But we take all those things for granted as we’re entering a space and we’re there to experience what the space has to offer, not how was this made.

Abby: And just a small segue, over on Seventh Avenue and 23rd Street, they were renewing, updating, I’ll call it, the, one of the entrances to the subway. Well, they uncovered it and on one side of the street, it’s the green metal. It’s been there forever because it’s made of metal and obviously it’s painted well, repainted whenever they need. It’s been there for a while. We got wood planks, so I kid you not, Mike, we now have painted green wood planks that look so temporary and so ugly and so cheap that I’m completely dumbfounded, because whenever you go to other cities and you look at their infrastructure and their transport and you look at the hubs or the stairs down, you know, there’s some investment, it needs to be there. It’s part of, sort of the flex of the city, right, they’re proud, and ours literally, anybody who wants to go check out 23rd Street and Seventh Avenue to compare the old metal version with the new wood painted one we have, I mean, it’s literally like I could have like knocked it up myself and that’s not saying much.

Brenda: OK, I’m going to age myself, watch the original Taking of Pelham One Two Three, and you will hear the line, “what do you want for your $0.35?” Look it up, folks.

Abby: I just wondered if overall, you know, given you work on some big, I’m imagining, government projects as well, that you see this sort of like, short sighted economy. Because when I think about longevity, I know this wood is going to be pretty useless really soon.

Mike: Yeah, absolutely. And we do work on some municipal projects. You know, I’ll actually go the other way with it and said that I’ve been pleasantly surprised at some of what organizations are doing in the opposite way. Logan Airport, for instance, we’ve been doing all the work for Logan Airport for 30 plus years, and Logan’s really trying hard to look nice, to be updated, to feel modern and to do innovative things. I mean, for years and years we just made black boxes with Helvetica and, or Swiss 721, I think it is, just the most average signs in the world. And over the last ten, 15 years, they’ve really been trying to put some effort into that experience. And that’s a municipal organization and that’s great to see. Apparently that is not the case in New York, but I guess that just might be another reason why Boston beats New York.

Abby: Oh, no. I fed into that. No, it was just, it was upsetting, you know, it’s upsetting when you see something which for me is so important, just look so slapdash.

Brenda: Yeah, poorly done.  

Abby: I think it just represents, yeah, something, I was really, really sad, but…

Mike: But, it goes to your earlier point of ideally nobody is stopping to look at it. Right. And so that that design or that solution was the opposite where you stopped and looked at and said what, this is terrible, this isn’t right.

Abby: So, we have a lot of design is listening. What should they be considering from your perspective when they design these experiences?

Mike: So, some of it the fabricator can advise on, right, as far as what’s durable and what’s going to hold up to a lawnmower and all those kind of things. I will say this if you’re doing technology, you need to be able to get electricity there and likely data there. There are some wireless data things that you can do and so forth, but you’re likely going to need to get electricity there.

And yes, there is solar, but solar is kind of limited and you’re not going to run a giant LED screen off the the sunlight of the day. You’ll see that museums that have these giant fields and they’ll say, oh, in the center of the field, let’s do this. You certainly can. But is it in the owners budget to dig up that sidewalk or, you know, however they have to get that electrical service to that spot and that would generally not be in the fabricator scope. That would generally be in the owner’s scope, and if it’s under construction, the general contractor or whatever it is, and that’s expensive.

Abby: Now, that may sound really simple to a few, few designers listening, but also, my call to designers is, don’t just take a screen, don’t just take a 16×9 screen. We have so much amazing technology.

Brenda: A lot of options out there.

Abby: There is tons of options where it can be really part of the environment. So, yeah, don’t just think it has to look like this and be stuck on a wall.

Mike: Yeah, and I would say think about it all year long, right? So, we’re doing work in Cleveland right now. Cleveland gets really cold, but it also gets really hot. Maybe this piece is going to go from a high of 110 degrees in the sun on an afternoon to -12 degrees. And what does that do? And what do you need to think about.

Abby: Mike, you’ve been doing this a long time. Why do you still get out of bed? What do you like about your job? What have you still got to accomplish?

Brenda: Where’s the passion?

Mike: So, for me, it’s two things. One, I’m incredibly vain and so I love when somebody goes somewhere and we did the work. So, someone will go to Disney World and I’ll say, oh, did you, did you like this ride and like that ride? And they’ll say, oh, I loved it. And I’ll just say, you’re welcome!  And they’re like, yeah, okay. I know you did the signs, yeah, that’s great. But I love, I love when we work on, on projects and you get to go see it or you see someplace as you’re in a new city and you drive by and say, oh, we did this and we did that, and I truly enjoy seeing projects that we worked on out in the wild.

What I like the best is actually helping people get careers in the art field. And so, I was an art kid in high school and I remember everyone’s like, well, you better give that up because you’re never going to get a job, right? And then I, I ended up going to a university and I double majored in art and mechanical engineering, which worked out good. But for the art part, I thought, man, I wonder if I can ever make this work. I wonder if I can ever take this, this passion that I have and, and have a job and a family and health insurance and all those different things. And helping people realize that is something that I enjoy quite a bit.

So, I like talking to high schools and I like talking to colleges and different youth groups and all these different things and say, look, if you’re really interested in the arts, there are a lot of things that you can do with that. I mean, we know through SEGD, and I mean, I know so many designers that are hiring all the time, and then there are all these graphic designers in all these colleges across the country and I’m sure internationally that are thinking, oh, if I could only find a job and how would I know? And you want so desperately to connect those two and say, wait, no, it can happen. You can be in this industry and you can be doing exciting, visually creative things for the rest of your life. This, this is out there.

And in our case, we hire a lot of sculptor, sculptors and painters and screen printers and all these people that work with their hands. You can come work with us and you can, you can screenprint every day and you can build every day and, and create art every day, and then work with other people who are artists and have the same mindset as you. And, and we can create that great sort of art school environment in a professional setting where every two weeks we will all get a paycheck.

Brenda: Oh, your phone is about to ring.

Mike: But that’s very exciting to me. And whether that’s helping somebody get into DCL or placing them with a designer and that leads into another thing I’m passionate about, which is STEM and STEAM.

So, STEM is science, technology, engineering, math, but STEAM is science, technology, engineering, art and math. And so, I do a lot of work with this in the state of Massachusetts. And if somebody says, oh, you know, we’re into to STEM, I’ll say, okay, cool, but have we thought about STEAM?

Brenda: Right.

Mike: Which is adding art into it. And in so many ways, I mean, everything we do is sort of art-based, right, industrial design and how are we going to make this look and how are we going to make it appealing, so, it’s, it’s one that somebody would select or want to use or whatever it is. There’s art in pretty much everything. And even as we’re talking about these large technological installations that we put up, sometimes they are purely to display art and purely to promote art, and I think that’s a very exciting thing, and as we talk about what are some of the trends that we’re seeing, I think that that is a trend that we’re, I’m seeing a little bit that I’m hoping will expand.

Abby: Well, I wish I’d met you…

Brenda: Yeah, exactly.

Abby: …20 years ago when I was leaving art school and it was, very little opportunities to actually, as you say, make money and survive through art, so, I completely agree with you, Mike, in terms of like art being part of actually everything that we create and do. So that’s incredibly stimulating. And Brenda also gives back to the community. Brenda’s a teacher too, she’s a professor, so, you know, I have a ton of, ton of teachers in my family, so I really respect giving back to the future generations and supporting them to reach their full potential. I think it’s absolutely fantastic.

Mike: Yeah, it’s fun and it’s something that we are fortunate to be able to do and it’s really great. And then when we find somebody who clicks and who fits with us, you know, we’re generally able to keep them here for a long time.

Abby: Thank you, Mike, for sharing your experiences with us today and offering some really useful insights to help us all design more successful experiences. And I want to underscore bringing in a fabricator early and thanking them throughout the process, and especially at the end for coming along on the journey with us and making sure that all of our designs come true.

So, thank you so much for joining us, Mike.

Mike: Oh, absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Abby: So, thanks to everyone who tuned in today. If you like what you heard, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you watch or listen to shows and make sure to leave a rating and a review and please share it with a friend. Goodbye. We’ll see you next time.

[Music] 

Producer: Matters of Experience is produced by Lorem Ipsum Corp. and recorded at Hangar Studios. Tune in next time for more fun discussions about experience design.

Show Notes

Design Communications Ltd.

SEGD

Massachusetts Business Roundtable

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new here, welcome. We’re happy to have you, and to our regular listeners, thank you for tuning in again. A brief reminder, my name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, everybody. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re speaking with Joe Federbush, President and Chief Strategist of EVOLIO Marketing. Joe works with the entire event ecosystem plus partners with experiential agencies, organizers, and associations. Joe is most known for his expertise in measuring event success, data storytelling, and helping brands develop the most impactful experiences, all with one goal in mind, providing actionable insights that help brands deliver greater return on experience, investment, and objectives. I sound a bit like a walking ad for you. I clearly love your company and everything you do. Joe, welcome to our show.

Joe: Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Brenda: Joe, could you tell us a little bit more specifically about what it is that you do? How do you go about doing your work?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, let’s face it, experiences, events, you know, they’re, not a lot of money is being thrown at them these days, we’re fighting for budget, you know, we’re fighting for attention in time with other marketing mediums and activities. So what we really do is those who are creating any type of experience, whether it’s in a museum, whether it’s at a convention, in a park, you name it, what we really want to do is just help them measure success by identifying KPIs, key performance indicators that are going to be the most important metrics to help them understand are they meeting, hopefully exceeding their objectives for that investment, for that brand, for that experience.

Abby: Wow, that’s cool. So, Joe, one of our focuses is storytelling, whatever it is we’re designing. So, I heard that notion of data storytelling, and it sort of piqued my interest. So, what specifically is that, and why is it important?

Joe: Yeah, data storytelling is extremely important, and it kind of plays off of your January 11th, 2023, episode about design experiences in storytelling, right? Now, we look at it the same way, but with numbers, basically. And you know, we’re inundated with data these days, especially when we went to virtual because everything was being captured. It almost did like a 180. Prior to the pandemic, there was not enough data or not enough good data. So now you have, you know, the whole challenge of rudimentary data, too much data. But, like, what’s compelling? What does it mean? What kind of decisions are they going to make from it? So, we look at it is whether it’s surveys, whether it’s, you know, digital data, you know, just what does it all mean? And most importantly, back to your point about the storytelling, what are we going to do with this data?

Actually, a good friend of mine, Victor Torregroza, he’s like an experiential expert at Intel. Years ago, he told me why you helped me so much is because you humanize data. You don’t need me to tell you how to read a pie chart, right? It’s about what are we doing with this information. Give you a perfect example, what seems like rudimentary data upfront when you look at like basic demographic of who’s coming to your event or experience, etc… You know, we look at it as, okay, well, what percentage are executives or what percentage are technical or tactical? Because your delivery has to really align with the audience, with your visitors, with their viewers.

So when you’re talking, alright, 60% of your audience is, you know, say, executive C-suite people, you want to make sure that you’re telling the story about how you can help their business versus, like if you’re talking to like technical or tactical people, you want to maybe show more product features and benefits.

Brenda: You know, I would love to play off of the, the human element that you were just mentioning and think about data collection. So, in my line of work, I’m pretty familiar with qualitative data, collecting focus groups, interviews, and all that kind of thing, and could you share a little bit, what does qualitative data collection look like for you?

Joe: Sure. So for us, you know, we are a full-service market research firm, and so when we look at qualitative, there are several aspects like you mentioned, focus groups, in-depth interviews, but now there’s also amazing AI tools that will take verbatim comments, whether it’s audio or it’s text and, really group it, combine it, code it into the right categories so you can start taking qualitative and actually convert it to quantitative to some degree, of course, depending on the volume of data.

But when we look at qualitative, you know, it’s just it’s getting that like emotion and that sentiment that you’re not going to necessarily get from a statistic. It’s that human connection and emotion.

Brenda: Listeners, you just missed two really alarmed or shocked or amazed expressions on Abby’s and my face when Joe started talking about AI. That’s incredible.

Joe: Yeah, we’re just scratching the surface now, and it’s mind-blowing. It saves and shaves so much hours of work, you know, which either A helps your margins or B, lowers your price so the clients get more value.

Abby: Are you worried you won’t have a job?

Joe: That’s the fear, right?

Abby: See, you didn’t even address that question! That was really slick. He’s like, I’m always going to be here, Abby.

Brenda: I’m not afraid, AI. Bring it on.

Joe: What I’ve learned about AI, the beauty of it is the information has to exist first. Allegedly.

Brenda: Well, but, and you were just talking about the emotional element and the human element, I don’t, I do not see how it is that you could possibly, when we’re talking about data collection in particular and when we’re talking about emotion, and when we’re talking about, you know, the nature of experience, I’m not concerned about AI sort of supplanting that human element.

Joe: I’m not yet either.

Brenda: Yet.

Abby: Yeah.

Brenda: Listeners, you heard that yet, right?

Abby: So when you think about an organization, how do they determine what they value, and how do you sort of quantify that? You know, what are the kinds of conversations you have to help people get at really defining or describing what value means to them?

Joe: Yeah, that is from my experience, in my opinion, that’s like one of the biggest parts of the project, actually. It’s not how to write a questionnaire or how to conduct the interviews. It’s literally all that due diligence and upfront work that has to be conducted to really get inside your stakeholders, your customers, and even their customers’ heads to understand what’s most important and what’s actionable.

You know, a lot of the time clients will come to us, for example, and they have a questionnaire already made, and you know, we kind of snicker at it like, what is this? What are you going to do with this information? So we kind of reverse engineer the process, looking at the end and working backwards. What decisions are you going to make based on, you know, this, this measurement research, etc.? Then let’s design A, the methodology to your point. You know, whether it’s a focus group, maybe it’s a survey, maybe it’s observations, maybe it’s behavioral tracking, maybe it’s social media. There’s so many data sources. What are the best data sources going to be to actually capture the right kinds of actionable information and help our clients really make true business decisions from?

Abby: What I was taught in school when I was in high school doing statistics.

Joe: Couple years ago.

Abby: Oh, I love you, Joe, was that, you know, you can sit there, you can look at a statistic, but it can be interpreted many different ways. So how do you make sure that you’ve asked the right question and you’re interpreting it in the right way?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s why, you know, I was saying before about, like it always starts with your objectives and your KPIs so that you don’t really go down a wrong path. I mean, I love it actually a lot of the time when the data, you know, sheds light on something you didn’t think about. But the point is, you know, you don’t want to use data in a dangerous way. You know, it shouldn’t be malicious. Of course, we all go into it hoping for a certain hypothesis or a certain outcome, but really more, it’s about understanding how did we get there? Did we get there, yes or no? What worked, what didn’t? And let’s continuously improve so that the data does get us to where we want to be for continuous improvement.

It’s rare that anyone’s going to get it right the first time and then just be able to like use that as their BKM, their best-known method and just keep repeating, repeating, repeating because things change. And I think, you know, prior to the pandemic, the economy was good, the event industry was exploding, you know, so we were a little, getting a little complacent. Some, not all, of course, but you know, we had a real rude awakening and now with the significant increase in costs for experiential and event marketing, we all have to be smarter, you know? So, we do need data more than we’ve ever needed it before, to your point, Abby, to make those really strong correct decisions and not try to twist the data to do something that it’s really not saying.

Abby: Does it ever put you in conflict? If you’re just responsible for the data and I use the word small J. If you’re doing all data and you’re obviously analyzing somebody else’s work, right, somebody created this event. There’s a whole team or teams of vendors. Are you ever in conflict?

Joe: Unfortunately, yes. Fortunately, unfortunately, however you want to look at it. But the point is it’s not going to fix itself, right, so you may as well identify it when hopefully, it’s just a small problem before it becomes a much larger problem. But there has definitely been instances where, you know, it’s, it’s a little challenging to communicate results that aren’t so great. And that’s, you know, that’s another reason why, you know, EVOLIO’s an independent third party. So, we’re not measuring our own work, you know, so we are going to be truly unbiased in what we present.

Abby: I want your job. You come out always smelling the roses.

Joe: Be careful what you wish for.

Brenda: Well, I’m curious about when we’re measuring success and along the lines of what we’re talking about, companies need to make sure that there’s a return on investment, that they’re spending their money wisely. And I’m curious to know what are the pieces that need to be taken care of, attended to, in order to make sure that the ROI is healthy.

Joe: So our model or framework or methods to help get there are to really understand, you know, first start with again, what are you trying to accomplish? You know, so many events and experiences are designed around different factors and different goals, like whether it’s sales, whether it’s education, whether it’s information, whether it’s, you know, societal things like DEI and sustainability. You know, we see it all the time where we want to measure our ROI, and I have to ask most times, well, how do you define ROI?

Brenda: Sure.

Joe: And a lot of the time, their definition of ROI is not even really about ROI. It’s about ROX, the return on experience, the return on emotion, ROE, you know, the things that we, that you mentioned in the introduction, and then we find out, well, you know if you’re not going to deliver a great experience, why would you expect ROI? So I try to convince a lot of the people that we work with, let’s not start with ROI and look at that as the end result. Let’s look at that as the next phase, making sure that we’re truly delivering great experiences, connecting with the right people in the right way.

Brenda: So you said one of my favorite words, which is emotion, and I would love for you to just give us a quick definition. When you’re talking about return on emotion, what’s in your thinking with that one?

Joe: Yeah. So, couple of ways to go about it because everyone’s always like, oh, that’s intangible, you can’t measure emotion, and there’s so many ways you truly can. It starts with sentiment. And you know, if you think of it from like a survey question point of view, if you do like an intercept survey as people are leaving a museum or an event or activity, say, hey, I would love to ask you some anonymous questions about what you thought about the event. And you have very specific messages designed that they could rate their level of agreement with. And of course, you want to make sure those sentiment statements are not biased. So how happy did this event make you? That’s not the way you ask the question. You know, how do you feel towards this event? Did it make you, you know, on a scale, say, of, you know, excited to bored? And then, obviously the higher end of the scale is where it’s about the positive emotion.

That’s the easiest way to measure return on emotion, in my opinion. Now, the beauty of it is there’s, kind of going back to AI and some other tools, there’s cameras and things that really capture sentiment from like recognition from your biologics, and that can track your, your expressions on your face. And we’re starting to see those now being used at events as well. And the cool thing about that is that it’s capturing information of people walking by, walking by, walking by, stopped, looked, came in, checked it out. Cameras facing them, they could see their like, reactions, and it’s truly now generating the most accurate levels of return on emotion you can get.

Abby: You mentioned a good experience and talking about measuring it, but what is a good experience? What makes a good experience for a visitor?

Joe: Yeah, you know, first is connecting, you know, having that true organic natural connection where it’s not forced, you know, you’re not forcing people into a room to do something that they may or may not feel comfortable doing, seeing being around too many people at the same place, at the same time, obviously after the last couple of years, what we’ve all been through. So what makes a good experience is really like attracting and engaging with the right people, but having the engagers be truly engaging, you know, not to beat up the word, but, you know, so many times we walk into experiences that are designed so impeccably and beautifully, and then it falls flat because the people working it are like, not that excited to be there.

So you know, you’re halfway there, and then I think to get full-way there is, yes, you design something that connects with the right people that you’re trying to attract and engage, and then having that kind of support staff, that team, those ambassadors, whatever the case may be, that really know how to walk you through and treat you as if you’re having a VIP experience. That, to me, is the perfect experience. Now, you know, when you work backwards from that, it’s okay, well, who are the right people, and what do they like to see? And it’s not one size fits all. So you have to make sure that, you know, you’re not setting false expectations of what it is you’re visiting.

Brenda: Joe, I’m particularly curious to know about the arena of social impact and how it is that social impact and social action is being embraced by brands. And I’d love to know: how do you go about measuring whether or not there’s an awareness that social action has truly been prompted?

Joe: It’s huge right now, and I’ll start with those who are not yet doing it. We encourage them to look at ways of measuring, you know, societal metrics versus just business metrics. DEI and even DEIB. If you’ve heard of DEIB, the B is belonging, and this is something I think is so important, especially when you look at it from like an experiential element. If someone who’s not white walks into a room of white people and they just, it’s homogenized, you know, that’s not a good look for that event, for that experience, for that brand. You know, even when we look at it from like a speakers perspective, if you’re at a conference and there’s multiple speakers, multiple tracks, you name it, there has to be diversity with the speakers. It can’t always be equal, but the point is there has to be that introduction that, you know, it just can’t be this homogenized event. And you know, same thing on the sustainability side, you know, especially in the event world. Let’s talk about trade shows for a second, you know, there’s a lot of churn and burn, a lot of carpet, a lot of, fortunately, a lot of recycling, but, you know, reducing carbon footprints in events is extremely important more than it’s ever been because it’s got to go somewhere and it can’t keep going to dumps.

Abby: Now, that’s true. I completely agree with that. Even in terms of all of the design builds we do for all these events. They have to be recyclable. They have to be reused. They have to have that flexibility where especially when you got to take care of the environment. Yeah, I completely agree.

Joe: I mean, in some countries are still 100% build and burn. You know, they haven’t even thought about it yet. And that’s scary.

Brenda: Oh, that is, that is crazy scary.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: You know, I’m really curious to know, are there things that we’re talking a lot about, you know, what should be measured and how it could be measured, and I’m curious to hear, what should not be measured?

Joe: Yeah, I think that’s a great question.

Brenda: Where do you draw the line?

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: Or where should we know to draw the line?

Joe: Yeah, I think, like what shouldn’t be measured are things that are obnoxious and pushy, you know. So, when are you going to buy this? You know, like, and a lot of it, it’s the delivery of how you’re asking. So, you know, how likely would you be to buy this product in the next X number of months is a nice way to say, will you buy this or not? You know, collecting the level of information you’re collecting about people, like personal information, that’s always a turnoff. So it’s like, let it be more of a natural opt-in process. Like, so if I’m answering a survey, that survey should be anonymous because if you want unbiased responses, you don’t want to start off by asking, you know who I am and what’s my email and what’s my job title, what’s my income, and how many kids do I have? And like, you know, like that’s a whole other story. But, you know, you could save those demographics for the end, but just for classification purposes. So we know, am I talking to a Gen Z or am I talking to a boomer because they’re obviously very different types of people, some of them, most of them, not me, but I’m in that gray area between. But yeah, so things that are just aren’t pushy or invasive.

Abby: So I really believe in making mistakes because without making mistakes, you can’t learn, and without learning, there’s no growth. So tell us some mistakes, some horror stories you’ve had along the way, and also some mistakes that clients often make so that anybody listening can try to avoid them.

Joe: You know, and I look through, like, all throughout my career, and I’ve been involved in, you know, event measurement for a pretty long time. And I look back, and it’s not even like those mistakes were always like 20 years ago, you know, just some even more recent where we let the client kind of dictate how to measure. So, there’s been instances where I’ve kicked myself, allowing the client to dictate to us what to do and how to do it. You want to, of course, get the business to help the client. So sometimes, you’ll sacrifice budget to get it done, and then you find yourself taking just a huge hit or a huge loss on the project. And I look at those as the biggest mistakes because then you’re setting the precedent for any future work where they’re like, oh, well, you did it this way last time, and you know, so then you’re kind of digging your own grave, so to speak.

Abby: Yeah, totally relate. Completely understand.

Brenda: Well, we would love to hear what you think in your own personal work, what you think is most successful about what you do.

Joe: I love what I do every day. And so, this is an easy question to answer, fortunately.

Brenda: Softball.

Joe: Yeah, right. Thank you. Thank you for the softball.

Brenda: A soft pitch. Is that what it is?

Joe: Yeah. So, I mean, I just love the fact that, especially if we look at more in the short term compared to the long term, but it’s always been the case. Budgets for event marketing and experiential marketing is always tight. And the fact that we can provide actionable data that helps our clients truly make decisions, it’s such a joy.

Actually, just yesterday, we were on a call with a client, and they did something very different with their experience, and they were really kind of sticking their neck out. We hope this works. So, they had the data because we did the research on-site post-show. The data supported that bringing all their brands together was an extremely successful experience, not only for them but for their customers. So in the past, they had like four different brands in four different locations. So the fact that A, they saved money by consolidating, B, they had more cohesiveness between their brands but still had their unique brand identity for their brands. But they had the data now to say, we did it, it worked, but it wasn’t 100% perfect. And then they realized, Wow, you know, next year we’re going to change this, and we’re going to do this more efficiently. So, it’s more like modifying and tweaking versus like, do we need to reinvent the wheel again?

Brenda: What are some of the lofty goals that you have for yourself for the next few years?

Joe: Yeah, I mean, for, for myself, you know, it’s just really grow the business and be the industry standard when it comes to measurement. You know, we’re working now on building experiential online, in-person, event B2B, B2C benchmarks, for example. So we’ve literally just compiled over 400,000 surveys that we’ve conducted since 2017. So over half a million responses now to create benchmarks for all of those normalized KPIs that a lot of clients want to know, but then, more importantly, be able to filter it between age and gender and geography and event type in industry and things like that. So that’s what we’re really looking forward to continue growing and expanding so that there truly is like normalized data out there so people can really feel good about, if we exceeded the industry benchmarks, congratulations if we’re close to it, congratulations. But if we’re under it, what are we going to need to do to improve our performance and outcomes so that we are exceeding benchmarks?

Brenda: So if you’re looking at years since 2017, I’m curious, what about the impact of COVID? How do you sort of take that into account when you’re looking at longitudinal data analysis such as that?

Joe: Yeah, and that’s a big piece of that segmentation with the benchmarks is, you know, the glory days prior to 2020. Of course, the 2020 through 2021 and a half where it was like, oh, and then now that things are rebounding because, you know, from 2021 when things really started coming back to in-person pretty strong till today, you know, there’s still that momentum that’s being rebuilt. You know, a lot of events, event organizers, associations, museums, you name it, they’re trying to get those bodies back. And now that, you know, social distancing is kind of being put aside, and we can get more bodies back together and not have the limitations of capacity limits and things like that, so we’re starting to see that rebound, and it’s rebounding pretty quick. I mean, I anticipate unless something drastic, God forbid, happens, I anticipate that early 2024 we’re going to be back to normal, whatever back to normal means. But, you know, we’re not going to be in any kind of state of fear, hopefully. But, you know, I speak with some people, and they’re like, oh, it’s not going to be for like two or three more years. I speak with other people, and they’re like it was yesterday, and it depends on your industry, of course, you know, but I think for, collectively and most globally, not all, but I think we will be in a good spot in probably like 9 to 12 more months.

Abby: So thinking about, you touched earlier on the changes that we saw happen due to COVID. How many of them are good and will stick around, and how many do you hope we’ll never see again?

Joe: So, great for QR codes, let’s call it, let’s say that.

Abby: That’s true.

Joe: Love it, digital payments, you know, things just connecting digitally.

Abby: Yeah.

Joe: But understanding where connecting digitally has its limits, you know, networking and all these things that were trying to be done digitally. Very, very difficult. And during the pandemic, we had measured literally hundreds of events, and, you know, it’s great for brand opportunities, excellent for education.

But from that building the connections and networking, you know, no matter how many matchmaking tools and things you tried and did, there were very, very few that were actually successful. I think building community so an event isn’t just three days, say, like now we, we, we understand how to make an event longer for the digital part of it. But yeah, the networking, connecting part, it just fell flat and hopefully, we never have to try to see it again.

Abby: Good. So, in-person still wins.

Brenda: Face to face.

Abby: People want to be with each other.

Joe: Without a doubt.

Brenda: I just remember the conversations back in 20, like 2012, 2013, 2014. Everybody was like, oh, we’ve got to go digital. We don’t need all this expense of face-to-face and, argh, getting people together, it’s so complicated.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: Well, here we are.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: We want to see each other in person.

Joe: Yeah.

Brenda: I find that very optimistic.

Joe: Hugely optimistic. And you know, digital has its place. We find it’s great for, like, keynotes and, you know, press launches and things like that, so, you know, for, for the masses. But for those that really want that connectivity and that build those relationships, it’s just so hard online. Yeah.

Abby: That intimacy. So three things you love about your job, Joe.

Joe: I love helping my clients with data versus, what is it, feelings aren’t facts. That’s my favorite line to my clients. Feelings aren’t facts.

Abby: I’m stealing that. I’m going to totally steal that.

Joe: Please steal it. I’ll put a little TM over it.

Brenda: TM.

Joe: Feelings are not facts. That’s my number one favorite thing. My number two favorite thing is owning a company and just having a team of employees that I truly love and care about, and I will do anything for them. And number three is just the hurdles. I love the hurdles. You know, everything can’t be easy all the time. And we’ve gone through some hurdles in, whether it’s education or experiential agencies. They only make us smarter and stronger.

Abby: Would you say then, because you’re clearly an entrepreneur, you own your own company, you’re running it very well? It’s growing year after year. Do you think it’s part of who you are? Wanting to be heading a team, wanting to be successful, and also wanting to be challenged? I think it’s like core to what I’ve seen in serial entrepreneurs is that they thrive off it. As soon as everything’s working, it’s boring.

Joe: Yeah. Oh, my employees hate that about me. When it’s working well, then it’s time to change it.

Brenda: Evolve. Let’s use the word evolve.

Joe: You know, that’s funny because EVOLIO literally means evolving your event portfolio, that’s, or experiential portfolio. So that’s where it came from, EVOLIO. It’s about evolution and constantly evolving. So, thank you for that.

Brenda: You betcha. I’m here for you, Joe. I’ve got your back.

Joe: You’ve got my back.

Abby: Yeah, well, you know, in some of my research, before we chatted to you, I did a few surveys.

Joe: There you go.

Abby: And one of them actually gave me a $5 Amazon gift card.

Joe: Only five?

Abby: I thought that was pretty good.

Joe: Oh, no. We do ten.

Abby: Really? Send me some surveys!

Joe: Yeah, between five and ten.

Abby: Is that the norm?

Joe: Yeah, yeah.

Brenda: Look at that. I don’t even like to check the box that says I agree to terms.

Joe: I know, right?

Brenda: That would have been like 10 hours of my time right there, which is how do I feel about these terms.

Joe: Exactly.

Brenda: You know, it took me ten years to get married, so I guess that you know.

Joe: Good things come to those who wait.

Brenda: Yeah, well, that’s for sure. That’s for sure.

Abby: I’ve learned so much today, Joe, from you. It’s incredible. Now I even know what data storytelling is.

Joe: All right!

Brenda: Oh my goodness, Joe, thank you so much for everything.

Joe: Thank you for having me.

Brenda: The work that you’re doing is amazing.

Joe: Well, thank you. And you guys as well. You just bring in some brilliant minds with brilliant people and your perspectives to it, and so thank you for having me.

Abby: Oh, thank you, thank you.

Brenda: Thank you.

Abby: And thanks, everyone for listening. If you like what you heard today, subscribe for more episodes of Matters of Experience wherever you listen to podcasts. We’ll see you next time. 

Show Notes

EVOLIO Marketing

Transcript

[Music]

Abby: Welcome to Matters of Experience, a podcast that explores the creativity, innovation, and psychology driving designed experiences and encounters. If you’re new here, welcome, and a big hello to our regular listeners. As you know, my name is Abigail Honor.

Brenda: Hello, everybody. This is Brenda Cowan.

Abby: Today, we’re speaking with Jonathan Ullman, President and CEO of the Mob Museum: The National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, located in downtown Las Vegas with the mission of advancing the public understanding of organized crime’s history and impact on society. Jonathan is responsible for leading the organization that’s been ranked number 20 on Tripadvisor’s list of top museums in the United States.

I think that’s kind of phenomenal. Jonathan’s museum career began at Liberty Science Center, New Jersey’s most visited museum, where he was intimately involved in the strategic planning and operation of the facility following a 109 million capital expansion. Prior to joining the Mob Museum, Jonathan was the president and COO at the National Soccer Hall of Fame, where he led the dramatic transformation of the organization’s operating model.

Jonathan has earned a huge list of accolades to his name, and it’s truly my pleasure to welcome him to the show. Jonathan, hello.

Jonathan: Hello. Thank you so much for having me.

Abby: So the first time I went to the museum was with the wonderful Cybelle Jones, SEGD’s CEO, and she was on the Gallagher team that worked on creating the Mob Museum, as she reiterated many, many times, working very, very closely with you, Jonathan. So can you talk about that time, the museum concept and design, and sort of the overall mission in those first early stages and how you collaborated with the experience design team to really create this truly wonderful institution?

Jonathan: Sure, they actually were involved with the Mob Museum twice; the initial opening in 2012, then in 2017, we embarked on what we referred to as the Museum Improvement Project, which was a renovation of the first floor. And then we also took the basement of our historic building.

You’ve been through the building, so, you know, it’s a former U.S. post office and federal courthouse, and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s this amazing 1933, just beautiful federal building and being historic, nationally significant, not just locally, but nationally significant because of events that took place in the courtroom. We had to be very careful about how the exhibits were developed and to not do anything that would alter the historic integrity of the building.

I think Gallagher did an amazing job of helping us create these really kind of just very immersive and kind of amazingly themed spaces, but doing it in a way that respected the historic integrity of the building.

Brenda: So you’re number 20 right now, which is pretty incredible. And my question, Jonathan, has to do with before you even opened. Did you have anxieties? Did you have doubts? Did you think there’s no way this is going to really happen and we’d love to hear what the thoughts were that were going through your head.

Jonathan: We don’t have enough time in the show to talk about my anxiety and doubts.

Brenda: Number one, number two.

Jonathan: But, I will say, look, you know, this project was an amazing opportunity. I mean, I think for someone like myself, having been in the museum industry, to know that you had, first of all, the support of the city of Las Vegas, you know, that was investing, you know, had the vision to, and the support at the highest levels. I mean, this is, you know, we still regard the then mayor, Oscar Goodman, as our chief visionary of the museum. And knowing that the organizations that were contracted to do the renovation were really world-class firms. So, there was no question in my mind that the quality of the experience, that this was going to be something unique and special, and amazing.

At the same time, Las Vegas marketplace is really tough and tough in a number of regards. I think one is if you take the list of metropolitan areas that are known for cultural experiences and museums, you’ll see, you know, right at the tippy top of the list, you know, Washington, D.C. Everybody knows, you know, some of the most amazing landmarks and museums are in Washington, D.C. People visit D.C. to go to those types of institutions.

Not quite the same thing in Las Vegas. You know, the first thing that comes to mind about going to Las Vegas isn’t like, you know, I’ve heard they have amazing museums.

Brenda:

Let’s have a cultural moment in Las Vegas.