Concept Testing, Prototyping, and Summative Evaluation for the Please Touch Museum’s Centennial Innovations Exhibition

Jul 2

Client: Please Touch Museum | Location: Philadelphia, PA | Funding: The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and National Endowment for Humanities

We used evaluation to support the Please Touch Museum in developing a new permanent exhibition featuring digital exhibits for children and measured its success against intended outcomes.

OVERVIEW

The Please Touch Museum (PTM) contracted us to support development of a new permanent exhibition about the Centennial exposition that took place in Philadelphia in 1876 (PTM is housed in one of the remaining Centennial buildings). The exhibition targets older children and includes digital exhibits, which were new ventures for the museum.

APPROACH

Our work on the exhibition spanned three years and crossed development and completion of the exhibition, including:

Concept Testing: Interviews with museum visitors about storyboards for the new exhibition
Prototyping: Observations of and interviews with multigenerational groups using digital exhibit prototypes
Summative Evaluation: Observations of and interviews with multigenerational groups in the exhibition after it opened to the public

CLIENT TAKEAWAYS

Given that digital exhibits were a new endeavor for the PTM, the staggered evaluations throughout development provided timely feedback to make decisions and strategize about the direction of the exhibition and its interpretative strategies. Early feedback from visitors guided PTM to balance the fun and enjoyable aspects of the exhibition with connecting it to the Centennial.

The summative evaluation revealed that the new exhibition was a welcome addition to the museum. Visitors reported enjoying their time in the exhibition and appreciated the range of activities, from hands-on activities to digital interactives. While visitors did not connect the exhibition to the Centennial, their takeaways from the exhibition were robust and largely related to invention, innovation, STEM, and discovery.