Darwin the Geologist, responding to your feedback
This feature from our Project Manager explains how your comments have improved the Sedgwick Museum’s new exhibition.
When developing the ‘Darwin the Geologist’ exhibition we listened to your comments carefully and responded to them in the final exhibit. We ran focus groups with adults, families, teachers, further education college students and undergraduate students. The feedback from these groups on prototype displays and interactives was extremely useful.
In response we made the text and text area larger and edited it down and split it up into more manageable sections. We colour coded the different sections of the exhibition to improve visitor orientation. We added more handling specimens than we originally planned and we added more quotes from diaries and manuscript material. We added more images and made the captions easier to read. Finally, we gave the exhibition a more maritime feel and added high-level signage. All these ideas came from you and they helped to make the exhibition a much richer experience.
But we did not stop collecting your comments and ideas after the exhibition opened in July. We interviewed visitors in the museum after they had seen the exhibition and read the remarks you made on the comment cards in the exhibition with great interest. In response, we made changes to the Magic Planet globe interactive to make it more responsive and user friendly. We developed a Darwin Discovery Chest for younger visitors and we are currently developing a website that will put the key objects and stories online so that you can re-visit some of the ideas in the exhibition at home.
Thank you for your input so far and please keep the comments coming.