Museum 2.0

MARCH 29, 2011

Last month, I learned about a fabulous, simple participatory experiment called “Case by Case” at the San Diego Museum of Natural History that uses visitor feedback to develop more effective object labels. To date, the solution has been to put photos on the walls, pray for funding, and ignore the front-end evaluation bit.

San Diego 55

San Diego History Museum Participatory 55

Museum 2.0

OCTOBER 18, 2011

We’ve been doing a little experiment at our museum with labels. The Santa Cruz Surfing Museum recently loaned us some fabulous surfboards that tell the co-mingled history of surfing and redwood trees in Santa Cruz. We decided to approach the label-writing for these boards in a participatory way.

Participatory 48

Participatory San Diego Museum History 48

Museum 2.0

MAY 24, 2011

Giskin Anomaly Right around Thanksgiving 2010 a strange story began to unfold in Balboa Park, San Diego. When San Diego visitors dial the 800-number and then the ID number, they get past the smoke screen and hear a character named Pandora, who tracks down "anomalies", leave messages for someone named Drake, who then decodes them.

Lesson 49

Lesson Game San Diego Design 49

Museum 2.0

AUGUST 3, 2009

Last month, the Christian Science Monitor published an article entitled, "Museums' new mantra: Connect with community." It took me a couple weeks (and various museum blog responses ) to realize what bugs me about this article--it treats "connecting with community" as a marketing ploy, a "mantra" rather than a mission.

Community 22

Community Museum San Diego San Francisco 22