Critique of the Rotunda Interactive Exhibits (James H-W)

Huddled in the Rotunda museum we were all informed that we needed to write a critique on the two interactive exhibits they had available. Unlike the group of small exhibits and the larger dinosaur screen was quite distracting during our conversation and was very inviting. It was inevitably the first display I investigated once we were free to explore.

As it had appeared from a distance the Dinosaurs of Yorkshire exhibit was very engaging. There only a limited selection of options available at any one time which made navigation simple and easy. The interactive game where you could place the plants, current animals and Dinosaurs into your own setting was enjoyable. The game could be played properly but if the user wanted to fool around and create a bustling dinosaur metropolis where nothing would be able to move (like we did) the program handled it smoothly. Commentary from the expert was short and to the point, not an unnecessary over abundance of information. Although a few of the revelations the exhibit tried to teach were perhaps already well known by most “Crocodiles are at least as old as the Dinosaurs” left me wondering if that was really the best they could come up with. The game process worked very well, before being allowed to place your Dinosaur into the backdrop you first had to pick from a selection of eight, two of which were red herrings. There was a brief bit of information from the expert that was slipped in nicely before you could continue. I found myself trying to guess which species of dinosaur they were before selecting them and was occasionally let down by answers such as “Yes a Sauropod like this one” only letting us know the family of species the picture belonged to. Only a small criticism but I’m unlikely to be the only person who thought that.

The smaller exhibit on the environment seemed to be pitched towards an older group of visitors. The interface was smart if perhaps a bit crowded on a small screen and held a lot more information. My attempts to button bash it into submission were thwarted as it moved almost instantaneously and smoothly from one page to another. At times there was too much information to be read, I doubt many visitors took their time to read through the newspapers articles. The interactive game based on coastal erosion was simple and effective. Information was given about the terrain and budget of the people affected and the user has to decide from a selection of preventive measures which would be best for the situation. Reasons for correct and incorrect answers were short and informative. The drawback of the quiz was that in the middle of a question I thought the exhibit had frozen before I noticed coastal erosion meter started sliding down at the top of the screen. I presume I had run out of time although no timer was active during the quiz or anything that made me aware that I was running out of lives. Annoyingly this end process was rather lengthy in time and couldn’t be skipped.

To conclude, both exhibits were well put together and fun to use at times. I enjoyed the simplicity of the dinosaur exhibit and felt it was the more immersive of the two, whereas the environmental exhibit was more informative but overly informative at times. Both have their minor annoyances and of all the aspects I learned from the visit the idea of tackling tackle these minor details was the biggest eye opener. Problems that probably don’t become apparent until we approach our exhibit from the perspective of a user and the fact that once all the core aspects of the design are completed and perfected that there is always more work that can be done.