While “interactive exhibit” tends to conjure images of screens and digital content, museums have long been providing ways for visitors to engage with the content behind the glass. This engagement is perhaps best characterized in the Discovery Room on the second floor of the Peabody, a designated space to bring hands-on interaction with living animals and other natural treasures. “The Discovery Room’s most important rule is ‘Please Touch!’” proclaims its website,1 and it follows through on that rule. With large numbers of children coming to the museum daily, such a child-focused area sees heavy use and is extremely popular (over 60,000 visitors visit the space annually out of 150,000 total).
We set out to explore ways in which an expansion of the Discovery Room’s philosophy to the wider Peabody experience could help increase engagement amongst children, adults and those with disabilities. We also wanted to explore novel tools and technologies that could help visitors interact with exhibits and navigate the museum space. We took inspiration from the existing exhibits and interactions at the Peabody, and the innovative work being done by other museums and creatives.
What follows is an assessment across four dimensions: interactive screens and digital exhibits, virtual and augmented reality, localization technology, and accessibility considerations. When conducting our research, we tried to be mindful of the Peabody’s mission to be a center for advancing science and maintaining good stewardship over its collections. As next steps, we propose taking the pulse of the Peabody staff in the kinds of technologies that they are interested in exploring, and then diving deep into how those may be used to best complement the museum’s rich history and important collections.