The New York Public Library’s design challenge was our most specific yet – interior space (Gottesman Exhibition Hall), time duration (semi-permanent…may last a decade), constraint (objects need conservational care), and even narrative (the public in some way “votes” for their objects of choice, thus creating a rotating, publicly-curated exhibition of Treasures.)
Significantly, this came right on the heels of RadioLab’s astronomically abstract “Big and Little, anything goes” challenge. There’s logic in the contrast – as an entity already highly fluid, creative, and digitally distributed, RadioLab looked for anchors to pull its podcast into material space. As an institution of assembled objects, NYPL looked for motivations to draw visitors into deeper interactions with content.
As soon as my HiFi/LoFi group started talking, we realized that the action of voting alone would not bring motivation. Voting is work; voting is an ask. Why should the visitor vote, why should they contribute their energy to an exhibition? Especially when the fruits of their voting labor would not be used to reshape the physical exhibition for some time?
This is where the word “entice” appeared, thanks to team leader, Brett Renfer. He wrote out on our whiteboard:
Entice, Enter, Engage, Extend
This framework brought us to the heart of the challenge. Within the specific structure provided by NYPL, our job was to design emotional prompts to draw visitors through these steps in the moment. Only then would the “flat, boring, beige pieces of paper” (to quote NYPL) stimulate visitors toward a discovery process that could unlocks the value of such prints and documents.
And then…