Interactive Exhibits: A Practical Guide to Developing and Operating Interactive Exhibits for Museum and Heritage Professionals

Every year, museums and heritage sites around the world invest millions in developing and maintaining interactive exhibits. These exhibits are delightful, a source of wonder, inspiration and learning, providing joyous, memorable, shared experiences for adults and children alike. Or at least they can be. Sadly, many end up frustratingly difficult to operate, boring or perennially broken. Poor design, ill-conceived content and badly planned maintenance can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities for enjoyment and learning.

Interactive Exhibits addresses this gap by bringing together the author’s three decades of experience and insight from across the museum and heritage sector. Providing an overview of the full exhibit life cycle – from initial concept and prototyping to installation and operation, and drawing on lessons from both successes and failures, this practical guide demystifies the process of creating interactive exhibits that truly work. Chapters include:

• what are interactive exhibits and why do you need them?
• what do good interactive exhibits look like?
• generating ideas for interactive exhibits
• working with exhibit developers
• looking after interactive exhibits
• the future of interactive exhibits.

A comprehensive and subject-defining text, this book is essential reading for museum and heritage professionals, exhibition designers and project managers as well as students studying to enter the museum and heritage sector.