Lombard: Holocaust Museum was intentionally designed to be hard to navigate
Sarah Lombard · a16z Podcast | The Living Museum · Jan 2, 2019 · at 20:19
Sarah Lombard discusses how physical space and architecture affect visitor experience at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
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“The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is built specifically to show a moment when a society was falling apart. It is supposed to feel slightly confused, what would you say, sort of shocking, chaotic, not necessarily chaotic, but more you think of the 19 thirties and Germany is falling apart, destabilizing, that's so good. And that makes it slightly hard to navigate on purpose.”
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“Digital is another tool in our storytelling toolbox, and so the question becomes, we have a story to tell. What can tell it best? Sometimes it's digital, sometimes it's film, sometimes it's an artifact or a facsimile of an artifact that you can touch.”
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“The physical experience I believe will always be richer than a digital experience because the physical experience can hit all of our senses, and digital can be woven into that.”
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“We did like a chalkboard, which, because we were asking people to respond, it's tactile, it's in museum, and Everyone can see their responses. The audience is sort of self-regulating. If there's something inappropriate, then people would erase it.”
Lombard: 'Fail fast' tech methodologies are not part of museum culture
“I don't think it's being overstaffed that's our challenge, which is the digital culture has gone to things like designing a minimum bioproduct, going for lean design, and so it's looking to fail fast. That is not yet part of the museum culture.”