Balloon Nanotubes

Report date: October, 2008

Overview

Evaluation Title:

Balloon Nanotubes

Date of report:

10/2008

Contact:

Sarah Cohn [1]

Permissions

[2]
Creative Commons
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike

General Description:

Cued interviews took place at the Science Museum of Minnesota with a total of 25 visitors on Friday, February 16, and Saturday, February 17. Each visitor was given the opportunity to spend as much time as they wanted doing the activity and reading the accompanying text. The three main issues addressed in this prototyping were: should the tubes be labeled, do people understand what this represents, and is this fun.

Major Findings:

This prototypying report shows that visitors’ ease of use went up as the labels and new explanatory text were added to the exhibit. No visitors expressed having any difficulty using the activity once the labels and new text were added. Also, as new labels and text were added, visitor understanding of the exhibit increased. Visitors who used the exhibit with labels and new text were less likely to give off-topic answers when asked what the exhibit is trying to show. The majority (84%) of the visitors said that they had fun with this activity. Ratings of how fun the activity was were not impacted by the addition of labels or new text.

Categorize

Evaluation type:

formative/remedial
public

Type of product(s) studied:

Exhibit

Method(s) of data collection:

interviews

Resources

Documents:

nanotubesoctober2008.pdf [3]

Author(s):

Sarah Cohn

Claire Philippe

Associated product(s):

Balloon Nanotubes (giant hanging model) [4]