Nina+Simon

**Nina Simon** designs and researches participatory museum experiences.
Nina has done a bit of work and research around designing questions for exhibits - she started by asking "What is the easiest way to start a conversation with someone? .... ask them a question" .... and then went through this presentation on designing a good question []

//I spoke about the importance of designing intentional frameworks for asking visitors questions, based on this blog post. Exhibit labels in science centers ask more questions than any other kinds of museums, and yet the questions are often awful--teacherly, overly rhetorical, and totally meaningless. While questions like: "Where were you last night?," asked by a cop or mother, garners the full attention of asker and askee alike, museum questions like "what is nanotechnology?," are fairly meaningless to all involved. I shared examples of question frameworks designed for specific types of visitor experiences: personal framing of exhibits (as in Facing Mars), private sharing (like the Storycorps booths), public dialogue (as in the Advice exhibit), and so on.//


 * Lesson 1** Make sure you care about the answer to your question? Where were you last night? versus What is nanotechnology?
 * Lesson 2** Make the question personal - What is one thing you want the new president say in his inaugural address?
 * Lesson 3** Ask speculative questions - What will you do when space is as cheap and accessible as the web is today? Would you go to Mars?
 * Lesson 4** Situate your question wisely
 * Lesson 5** Set Goals test and refine?

Nina's six Ideas to consider when designing a participatory community environment online. For a breakdown of further explanations, please see Nina's blog post below.


 * 1) **First, you have to connect your idea to the institutional mission.** My personal thoughts after watching the video was that, it was enjoyable to viewing the photographic challenges and the tone of the artifacts shared. Some ideas on sustained commentment of engaging visitors is also useful to consider - before, during and after face-to-face events.
 * 2) **Second, you need to find the right tool to implement your idea.** I thought is was insightful when Nina said we are suduced by technology and it doesn't reflect teh users needs/wants. We need a platform that can do what we envision is interactive for relevant, on-going discourse online. The educative purpose and concepts drive the space.
 * 3) **Third, you need to align your idea with institutional culture. I took from this...find the project that's not going to be a nightmare.** Again I loved the user-generated exhibitions.
 * 4) **Fourth, you need to find a way to evaluate what visitors do – and more importantly, to evaluate using criteria that are understood and appreciated by everyone in your institution.** Evaluating outcomes rather than outputs. What's the value of this from institutional perspective, visitor's perspective?
 * 5) ****Fifth and most challengingly, you need to reserve resources (dollars and staff) for project operation.**** Who are the people and how are they incorporated in the project in an interactive way?
 * 6) **Sixth, you need other people to help you.** Participation on the web...need a personal entry point and connection to an individual to help you with what you need.

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