Focused Remediation of the Flagship Exhibition at George Washington’s Mount Vernon 

Experience Design Research
Written By Cathy Sigmond

Client: George Washington’s Mount Vernon | Location: Mount Vernon, VA

 
 

We continued to help George Washington’s Mount Vernon refine its new flagship exhibition by testing how components resonated with children 8-12 years old and recommending feasible remediations at this stage of design. 

OVERVIEW

This 2024 formative evaluation followed a 2022 front-end evaluation for George Washington’s Mount Vernon (Mount Vernon) to inform the revitalization of their flagship exhibition. The new exhibition focuses on the life of George Washington and aims to embrace the complexities and nuances of George Washington, his world, and his legacy. Our evaluation targeted specific aspects of the exhibition that the staff anticipated challenges communicating with children 8-12 years old.

APPROACH

At the time of the formative evaluation, the exhibition was at 90% design. The goal of the evaluation was to explore to what extent the exhibition content is accessible and friendly to children 8-12 years old and their visiting companions. We selected exhibition content to show adult caregivers and children 8-12 years old based on anticipated communication challenges and with consideration to what aspects of the exhibition could still be remediated at this design stage. Kera Collective staff conducted the interviews with adult-child pairs via Zoom so that they could show individuals exhibition design materials. Participants were recruited from Kera Collective’s Research Community.

CLIENT TAKEAWAYS

Three key takeaways emerged: 

  1. Adults’ and children’s reactions to the materials emphasized their desire for humanizing stories about George Washington. This finding underscores what we learned in the front-end evaluation, but surfaced specific ideas about how the wording and presentation currently mythologizes George Washington in problematic ways.

  2. Adults and children are interested in the Mindset Moments that focus on character traits of George Washington, but they need more support understanding their context and relating to them personally. We recommend Mount Vernon look closely at the many components of the Mindset Moments and critique how they are providing context clues to help children understand the character trait of focus.

  3. The two gallery materials that we tested—for the Mount Vernon gallery and the Presidency gallery—highlighted the need for additional sensitivity in discussing slavery. Additional findings surfaced specific to each set of materials.

In a reflection meeting with Mount Vernon, staff found the report immensely helpful for refining the exhibition script and selecting graphics. Specifically, they felt they had actionable guidance to make the Mindset Moments accessible and also refined in a way that humanizes versus mythologizes George Washington.

Cathy Sigmond

Cathy brings many years of experience in education and experience design to her role as Head of Strategy at Kera Collective. 

Having previously worked in a variety of educational settings, Cathy is driven by her constant fascination and delight at how people make discoveries about the familiar and the unfamiliar. 

Cathy loves helping to shape experiences that spark curiosity and make a difference in people’s lives. She particularly enjoys the rapid, iterative nature of design-based research and the deep insights that come from qualitative research, especially on projects exploring interactions with the digital and built environments. 

Cathy shares her passion for experience design research widely and regularly guest lectures for graduate programs, including the Fashion Institute of Technology’s Exhibition and Experience Design Program and the Pratt Institute’s School of Information. Cathy served as the co-chair of the Museum Computer Network’s Human-Centered Design special interest group from 2018-2021.

Outside of work, you can usually find Cathy playing soccer, thrifting, or making her way through her large cookbook collection. 

Cathy’s favorite museum experiences are immersive; she will always vividly remember walking through the giant heart at the Franklin Institute, being surrounded by birds at the Peabody Essex Museum, and hearing centuries-old instruments come to life at the Museum of Musical Instruments. 

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