Scientific paper? But I didn't do any science!

The display cases were donated from the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and were custom made for those purposes.

Hence the weird dimensions.

Although I still question the need to make some of the dimensions quite so utterly bizarre.

At any rate, they're starting to bug us about our end-of-internship papers. Well... about that.

They apparently haven't had any interns tasked with jobs quite like this one before--obviously. If they had, my work wouldn't have been quite so...from scratch. It would've been more like, "Last year's intern suggested this interactive for the museum, develop an interactive for us." Which, while still a pretty intimidating task, would probably have been a little less "Ack!" than "So we'd like you to learn how to design museums. Then design us a museum."

So...

I guess I'll be giving them All The Stuff A Real Designer Would and we'll call that good enough. Because a paper about how I learned how to museum is less helpful than a paper about how you're going to at least start fixing the problem of your disorganised jumble of museum kthxbye.

Oh, don't worry. You've seen the style of stuff I'm writing. It's pompous, full of active verbs, and hopefully glosses over how mildly irritated I am with the enormity of what I was tasked with...

APDA Exhibit Design Brief

Introduction

PARI’s largest ongoing scientific mission is the APDA project. Creating a museum exhibit experience based around this project would serve to educate the public on a concrete part of PARI’s scientific mission. Guests will also be able to take advantage of enlarged example plates to feel connected to the project, as well as develop a sense of personal involvement through the SCOPE citizen science aspect of APDA, which could be expanded and further developed as PARI’s museum undergoes its transformation. The exhibit will also reflect North Carolina’s science/math curriculum and address any relevant standards of education possible, given APDA’s nature.

Goals and Objectives

The exhibit will allow guests to feel engaged in the history of APDA and excited by a chance to participate in real scientific endeavours via the SCOPE project. The history of APDA will be explored through enlarged example plates, short videos, and engaging graphical displays. Guests will also be able to see, through animated images and selected examples, the use of the plate collection in scientific research. The opportunity will also be taken to briefly explain the relevant scientific concepts behind using APDA plates for research, such as stellar classification, parallax, and red/blue shift. 

Anticipated Visitor Experience

Guests will hear about APDA earlier in their museum experience, either through PARI staff, brochures, or the timeline. The exhibit will allow them to further their understanding of what a plate library is and its significance to science by handling printed copies of plates, engaging with scientific concepts represented by those plates, and participating in active scientific research via the SCOPE project as an interactive feature. By participating as citizen scientists, visitors will develop a personal relationship with the science done at PARI, furthering an understanding of the site’s present state of affairs and appreciation of the site’s history. 

Intended Outcomes

APDA will be an interactive experience to allow visitors to develop a similar attachment to the site as one held by its staff. Additionally, the exhibit will explain the historical and scientific importance of maintaining a plate library while allowing a display mobile enough to be moved in the event of traveling exhibits.

This is an actual thing I'll be submitting. I'll read through it again...maybe....and please let me know if you randomly see any typos, because chances are it won't actually be reviewed by anyone prior to Thursday. LOL.

I could sneak anything in there...
...but I won't, because I might want them to actually hire me someday.
Or at least give me a good reference to a museum that might actually want to hire me someday.

I'll also be giving them a souped up storyboard--souped up because I want to be sure they actually understand why the current layout is a bit of a problem. To the point where I have talked to people outside of PARI who seem concerned that our gallery was thrown together/left largely unchanged since 1943 like most of the surrounding area/designed by somebody with minimal knowledge of museums or who had an abnormal and mildly terrifying fondness for quartz.

Which is absurd, since the building didn't exist until about 1963. Hence the gold carpet. The 1940s would have been, if not entirely more tasteful in the modern sense, at least less...vocal...in carpeting choice: 

I have spent more time considering carpet this summer...
Still, this is better than the gold. By a lot.
It's basically the same pattern as the ca.1941 Rocky's Soda Shop counter.

So my storyboard will include a section titled "Exemplars" with the two museums I visited and some of their design practices. I started with the Space and Rocket Centre, since I know that museum just about as well as I know PARI's. Better, in some ways. I will have spent about a week and a half longer at PARI than I have, cumulatively, at the Space and Rocket Centre. I also have more photos--since you get a fair few photos of anywhere if you spend about 35 days there over the course of your life, even if they aren't all saved to this computer (many are on discs), relevant to your explanation (since they've renovated since), or you didn't actually have a cellphone because smartphones weren't really a thing yet.

I'm using the Punch Card colour scheme

The upshot being that I don't need to steal *as* many photos from around the internet. Heh. 

I need to go and add photo credits, actually. Since I couldn't get a clean photo of that one, it was swarming with people. Heh. 

So I'll be submitting that along with my 3D models and design briefs. NOT to be confused with Designer Briefs. They'll have to find some other intern to provide them with those. Preferably when I'm somewhere else.