Tim J. Beedle


Original publication in the Winter 2001 edition of World Class Design, a corporate publication of JPI Design.


The New Science Center: Creating an Experience


Imagine if you could temporarily leave behind your everyday existence to become a member of an archaeological team, uncovering hidden facts about an ancient society in a setting straight out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Perhaps you'd prefer playing the role of a police detective, interviewing witnesses and looking for clues while attempting to solve a homicide case. How about visiting an entire city where you are encouraged to try your hand at any number of things, from producing a television newscast, to navigating a helicopter, to creating your own robot? All of these experiences are possible, but you're not going to find them at Disney World. To take part in adventures such as these you'll have to pay a visit to a place that probably doesn't come immediately to mind when thinking about entertainment-your nearest science center.

"Science centers seemed like they were growing so static for awhile," remarks Allen Boerger, Principal/Creative of the COSI Studio, "now they've really started busting out from all sides." The COSI Studio is the design group for Ohio's Center of Science and Industry, or COSI, an innovative new museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio. COSI is one of several science centers taking a new approach in the way they present science to the public. The method traditionally taken by museums, of grouping together simple, loosely themed interactive exhibits, isn't cutting it anymore. In a society where information can be obtained with the click of a hyperlink, it takes something exciting and engaging to draw visitors to a museum.

"Science centers should be places where people can come and try out science and technology for themselves, and not just collect facts," explains Joe Wisne, Vice President of the COSI Studio. "It is the act of doing, the three-dimensional immersion into another world that should set the museum experience apart from any other. A museum is able to incorporate real objects, to create tangible effects that are impossible to do virtually." Professionals in the science center industry realize that to remain relevant they must go beyond simply trying to educate, and offer visitors an experience that they can't get from a computer.

This new attitude has led to the development of a new kind of science exhibit, one that's not satisfied with merely showcasing scientific principles, but wants to provide its participants with a complete "learning experience." A learning experience requires a much deeper level of involvement than a more traditional science exhibit. Guests may be asked to take on a persona and play a part in an experience often heightened by visual and sound effects, as well as an involving storyline.

At least that's one way to define it. Charlie Walter, Senior Vice President at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, believes that the key to creating a successful learning experience often lies in not thinking like a science professional. "The museum field is maturing and realizing that it really should approach things from the visitor's perspective," he explains. "How can we engage them? Any kind of personal connection, where you can reach out and touch someone personally and draw them in, that's a more powerful educational experience."

Powerful, yes, and if designed correctly the experience can be very memorable as well. Since opening in November of 1999, thousands of visitors have been both entertained and educated by COSI's unique way of presenting science.

"We organized COSI the way nature would, so the brain can better integrate real-world connections," explains Wisne. "Rather than creating a 'technology wing,' we incorporated technology in Life, in Gadgets, in Ocean, and virtually anywhere it worked."

Wisne is referring to COSI's "Learning Worlds," a set of elaborate, highly-themed exhibits that present science by utilizing technology more typically associated with theme parks. This approach is becoming much more common in the industry, but COSI is the first institution to incorporate it extensively throughout the entire museum. In doing this, COSI manages to create experiences that are educational, engaging, and fun.

One of the most innovative Learning Worlds is simply titled Adventure. Asking visitors to become archaeological explorers, Adventure includes ancient artifacts, buried skeletons, faux booby traps, mysterious idols, and a walk-through maze; all within an elaborate set designed to look like a 30's-era archaeological dig site. It features cutting edge sound and visual effects, audio-animatronic characters, smoke and laser effects, and a talented crew of actors that add a human touch to the experience and help to make the "adventure" a memorable one. It may also remind more than a few people of a certain fedora-wearing archaeologist.

The exhibition was designed by the COSI Studio, and Boerger admits that although Indiana Jones was an influence in its design, the learning experience is very much science-oriented. "Indiana Jones was just a vehicle we used to tell a bigger story which was about the scientific process," he explains. "It's pretty common to see science exhibits dealing with a particular subject, but up until now nobody had ever really done a good exhibit on how you do science."

Adventure presents its visitors with a challenge: aid their fellow explorers in learning about a recently discovered, long-lost civilization by forming scientific questions, piecing together clues and developing answers to those questions. Along the way visitors can navigate a maze, solve various puzzles, unearth buried artifacts, and obtain hints from several mysterious idols. The animatronic idols represent four important tenets of the scientific process: inspiration, questioning, reason, and perseverance. If visitors invest the time to solve all the mysteries presented to them, they can gain access to an overlooking observatory, the only structure on the dig site that the explorer team has been unable to access.

Because guests are solving a series of puzzles to obtain an eventual goal, to fully experience Adventure requires a bit of a time investment. According to Boerger, it takes about 45 minutes for most people to solve all of the puzzles and gain access to the observatory. Although there's plenty in Adventure to experience if a visitor chooses not to work towards the goal, Boerger claims most visitors invest the extra time. He also promises the payoff is worth it. "A surprising number of our guests actually go all the way through with it," he says, "and they leave with a big smile on their face."

Still, it's hard to believe that everyone leaves smiling. Especially if crawling around caves and studying buried skeletons is a bit too creepy for you. However, for those people interested in a more urban adventure, a very successful traveling exhibit may prove difficult to resist, particularly if you've ever imagined partnering up with Detective Sipowicz for an episode of NYPD Blue.

Designed by a team at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, under the management of Walter, the exhibit is entitled Whodunit? The Science of Solving Crime. This groundbreaking learning experience has successfully toured science centers around the country for the past eight years. And it doesn't show any sign of slowing down.

"We wanted the exhibit to be about forensic science," explains Walter, "however, we didn't want it to become a textbook on forensic science. We wanted it to be more like an Agatha Christie novel, where it's very engaging."

Whodunit? accomplishes this by presenting its visitors with a mystery to solve. Participants begin their experience at a diner that has just been robbed. Right outside the diner is an alley, where a body can be seen face down in the street. At this point your challenge is made evident, you must determine who is responsible for the robbery and the murder by using your skills of observation and deduction, along with a bit of forensic science.

To ensure that they get started on the right foot, guests may view a mock news broadcast and pick up a copy of The Examiner, a newspaper that acts as a guide through the exhibit. After that, participants can listen to a detective question a short-order chef, one of the few witnesses. Out in the alley, visitors should check the scene carefully for clues. Brandi West, Special Projects Coordinator for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, promises that this particular task is not as easy as it may sound. "It's a great observational exercise because there are so many things that people don't even realize are clues," she says.

Once done surveying the scene, visitors then move into the crime lab, the highlight of the exhibition. In the lab, guests are instructed in the various branches of forensic science that professionals use in solving crimes. After learning how the science works, participants may then use their new forensic skills hands-on to help find their suspect.

As Walter makes clear, learning the science and using it is crucial to solving the mystery. "We've thrown in some red herrings," he warns. "If you only use your powers of observation, and you don't test it with science in the crime lab, you'll probably be wrong. Your senses are critical to the process, but you have to add that layer of scientific investigation."

People may be surprised by the variety of scientific skills often utilized to solve a single crime. Guests will use methods such as toxicology, fingerprinting, ballistics, and even DNA profiling to help determine the culprit. The crime lab also offers guests a chance to view video of an actual autopsy, something West warns is not for everyone. "We had to do a lot of research on that, as to what we could show and what we couldn't," she explains. "We did an in-house study. We recorded the entire autopsy and showed it to the staff to see what they could and could not handle. We determined that the incisions were the worst part. The people watching could not handle seeing the incisions being made. So, essentially what happens is you see a chest and it immediately goes to an open chest cavity. You don't see the incisions.

From Whodunit?'s conception, accuracy was a high priority. Consultants were brought in from all branches of forensic science to ensure that the learning experience was true to life. In keeping with this spirit, Whodunit? was also recently updated during a break in its touring schedule. "We brought it back home in the spring, and we did some refurbishment on it," explains West. "Some of the science within the exhibit had become outdated. We went through and updated what needed to be updated, and basically gave it a fresh paint job."

The updates and maintenance are important since Whodunit? has proven remarkably popular and is scheduled to tour for several more years. Since premiering at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History in 1993, thousands of people have participated in the learning experience. The exhibition has completed two extensive tours, stopping at a total of twenty science centers. A recently booked third round of tours will keep Whodunit? on the road until at least 2002.

Walter isn't surprised that the exhibit remains popular, and attributes some of that success to developing an appealing idea. "We knew that if we did it right it would have the potential to draw large numbers of people," he remarks. "Look at how popular detective shows are. We've put people center stage and invited them to come in and participate."

Occasionally, innovative exhibits such as Whodunit? and Adventure may inspire other people in the industry to create an equally engaging exhibition for their own museum. Or, in at least one case, inspire the creation of a new museum entirely. The idea for Science City at Union Station, a fairly new science center in Kansas City, MO, was born after its president, Dr. David Ucko, visited a temporary exhibit in Paris in the late 1980s.

"It was called Cités-Cinés, or Cinema City, and it basically consisted of a series of environments done in a very evocative way, from a rooftop, to a war scene, to a jail cell," he describes. "They would project film clips in these environments and you would listen to the soundtrack of these clips via headphones. These were famous films that had been shot in a similar kind of environment, so you actually felt very much like you were in the scene while you were watching the clip about it. I began to think about how you could translate that kind of engagement into a more purposefully educational approach, particularly in a science center."

In a case of perfect timing, Ucko was given the opportunity to design a new kind of science center in 1990. Taking some cues from Cités-Cinés, he has created a city that is completely immersive, but also includes plenty of hands-on activities. "We give the visitor what we call "adventures", which are basically goal-directed role playing activities within these environments, and add into that characters which we call "interactors", who are the people that live and work in Science City, so to speak," explains Ucko. "We've also added thousands of props throughout the city to help give it authenticity."

Located inside the newly renovated, historic Union Station, Science City offers 50 diverse "environments," each one designed to look like a part of a city. There's a railroad station, a medical center, a television studio, several parks, a hotel, and even an astronaut training center. Each specific area offers hands on activities that utilize science typically found in that sort of environment. For example, visitors can reroute trains while at the railroad station, assist in a surgical intervention at the medical center, or become news anchors for the television studio. Essentially, Science City itself is one large learning experience.

Science City uses its city theme and attention to realism as a tool to show visitors how science can be used everyday in familiar places. Oftentimes, this means providing guests with experiences that are unavailable to them in the real world. "We asked people what it is they wanted to experience," Ucko elaborates. "There are places they've always wanted to go, but haven't been able to, like under the streets. We have something like that, which we call Secret City."

Experiences such as the one that Secret City offers result in people walking away from Science City with a better understanding of how important science is in everyday life, and how it has evolved over the past century. Although most people are not likely to be aware of that fact that they're being educated while they explore a bat-infested cave or ride a high-wire bicycle across the tops of buildings.

Ucko also agrees that success in the science center world often relies on taking risks and looking at new ways of presenting science. In creating Science City, that meant not using scientific principles as a starting point. As he explains it, "Typically, you design an exhibit based on content. You determine what are the most important principles that you want to teach. We designed Science City based on experiences, the experiences that visitors told us they wanted to have, knowing full well that those experiences were all based in some way on science."

Despite its willingness to entertain, Science City's primary goal is to educate. Ucko just refuses to believe that science can't also be fun. "I like to use the term recreational learning, because it's really fun with a purpose," explains Ucko. "We try to create activities that are intrinsically enjoyable, but are also all based on science in some form, so that people are experiencing science first hand and learning about it in a way that is fun."

That applies to COSI and The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History as well. All three museums are hoping to attract guests not typically accustomed to visiting science centers. They're also looking towards the future. Science City has vowed to remain in a constant state of change and revision, promising new adventures with every single visit. The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History has just opened a new permanent exhibit on dinosaurs. COSI has also just opened a new exhibition. Entitled Space, it's an immersive look at our space program. The COSI Studio is also working on a new audio-animatronic show on health that is scheduled to open later on this year.

All of this innovation, creativity and effort is being put forth to accomplish one simple goal: to make science accessible to everyone. "We do want to make science seem more accessible, because it is accessible," asserts Walter. "I think we as a society have made science so complex that it's either in books or in a university. Well, that's not science. Science is all around you."

True, but leave it to a science center to make it seem so fun.

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