Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Field Trip: American Museum of Natural History

1. Had a nice trip

I have to admit we had a nice trip on a nice weekend morning. The trip was held in American Museum of Natural History. Last time I was here is 1994, when I was 13 years old.

Teacher Jamie kindly introduce us another gentleman, Dean, who work for the museum, as a one day tour guide for us. One interesting point Dean mentioned is that we cannot put textbooks on the wall and force visitors to take them all words by words. As a solution, we use a way through design to attract people's eye and try to stimulate them, and see if we can rise their interest about the subject we display.

2. Interesting Displaying Design


a) touch screen interface

This is called Tree of Life, which author use a 3D tree object to demonstrate the various creatures' life within and related to a tree. Good thing about it is user can have a broad view about different lives on the tree, and can have detail review of specific one if he click into it.

I and my classmate were talking about if we can grab certain creatures from the tree into a box, a introduction box which give you detail information of your selection , that would be more attractive and create more fun feeling with this system.




This is another touch screen demonstration system which tells you about the differences of brain and nerves system between human and chimpanzee.

Something I like about this system if the buttons lie in the lower right corner. If you only click on human, it will show you the detail of human body structure, such as human brain. But if you click on both human and chimpanzee, it will show you the comparison of brains of human and chimpanzee.



b) box

In the exhibition we find some interesting box that display certain amount of small object. I specially love the graphic design as the picture beside. You can see the designer emphasize the number to attract visitor's eye, and it really got me.



c) Round Table
Jamie was like King Arthur, and we all stand surrounding the round table, carefully listen to his instruction. It's interesting that we talked and shared opinion around the table, which reminds me a Chinese traditional dining situation: a big family sitting around a big round table and sharing food, feeling, and emotion. (Obviously we don't wanna share those bones on the demonstrate table)

The table fascinate me because there's the other one designed in opposite way, which is text content placed inside, and physical object outside on the table.

d) Screen projection box
Like in movies, there's a 3D projected image!! In a small box demonstrating people's behaviors like using tools. The designer successfully use a dark box with some thin transparent sheet and a hidden projector located below to simulate the 3D projection.


3. Shop for working, not for shopping

After visiting the exhibiting area, Jamie told us to go to the shop. I was wondering why we have to go to a souvenir shop on this trip? In the end it's a workshop to create animal model, not for selling souvenir.


We discovered how they create those fake animals and plants, by using all kind of artificial materials and sometimes real one like leather. Just like making a movie, they try to recreate those creatures as real as possible which really fascinate me.