This week we went to the Cooper Hewitt museum, which so happened to be the second ever design museum that I have ever visited. My experience in this museum was strange, disorienting and confusing all at the same time the first reason being that I thought I was going to a museum-museum and not a design/modern art museum. When we got our tickets, we were immediately introduced to their “magic pen” that saves the items that you like electronically, and that you can access on an interactive table or on another website later. At first, I thought it was a cool concept because the first interactive table we saw in the lobby allowed the user to draw, drag preset collection items and create your own design. I figured that it was placed in the lobby so that people can experiment with it first before moving on to the rest of the museum. Little did I know that these tables popped up more throughout the museum, providing similar actions.
We moved to the second floor of the museum and this is where all the confusion began. Maybe I am just not well educated enough on how museum curating works, but I saw all these collection pieces and I was confused on how they fit together in terms of the kinds of criteria they had to meet to be presented in a museum, and how do they fit together? Another thing I noticed was that the interactive tables were popping up fairly frequently, which made me feel like the technology was taking away from the physical art pieces surrounding the room. I do not know the whole motivation behind why Cooper Hewitt decided to develop the pen technology but I would say that it’s a good attempt in trying to link outside art pieces with their physical ones but at the same time, the way that the technology is incorporated in the art pieces could be way better.
I found myself to be lost on the second floor. I really did not understand the layout or structure of the museum. Maybe Cooper Hewitt wanted people to feel “lost” so that they would be “lost in the inspiration of design” or something along those lines. But when we got to the third floor, I felt like it was so much more clear, that this floor was about Architectural designs, hence, exhibiting works from an architectural company. And the pieces on that floor made it more understandable of how everything fits together.
The last two things I want to touch upon are the interactive pieces in the museum, the first being the Immersion Room and the one with the body pose, called Beautiful Users. With Immersion Room, I felt very, normal about being in that space. I understand that we are trying to create wallpaper as it it was part of the room but I felt like this piece was just, normal and not something ground-breakingly inspiring. Maybe it was when it was first released, but now that we’ve seen Connected Worlds, this is like a baby.
Last, Beautiful Users was the display with the body poses and after reading the description about it, it makes much more sense now than when I was interacting with it. It is apparently:
An interactive experience that help visitors understand the relationship between the human body and design, exploring the history and evolution of user-centered design
Without knowing this, I was confused on how some of the body poses related to the objects showing up on the screen after.
Overall, by looking at the Cooper Hewitt in the “Public Interactives lens” , I would still say that it was confusing, disorienting and strange, rating my experience a 4/10. Looking at the museum from a DT perspective and getting distracted with the technology, I would rate that experience an 8.
