The Bird Discovery Point (BDP) at the Brookfield Zoo was comprised of six interactive exhibits with the goal to promote family interaction, increase visitor appreciation for birds, increase use of under-utilized space and increase knowledge of birds by creating an entertaining introduction to ornithology. This paper described issues in each evaluation effort, lessons that were learned and how the BDP evaluations impacted decision making processes at the zoo. The methods used in this evaluation study were varied. Traffic patterns, open-ended interviews, surveys, and both formative and summative evaluations were performed. Open-ended interviews were 25 minutes not taking into account the fact that visitors may interrupt. Making sure to have both an interviewer and a docent present was essential in order to complete the interviews without interruption. A series of prototypes were performed in order to design an exhibit that is functional and extracts the goal message. Throughout prototyping the evaluators learned that it is essential to have a large sample size when performing observational data of over 400 individuals, in the space visitors are confused by signage that has language that is poetic or involves the use of imagery, and that it was essential to gather more than one form of data at the interactive exhibit. Overall, the creation of the BDP exhibits and the evaluation over the four year period had a positive effect on the development of the zoo and future exhibits.
I was interested in this evaluation because creating informal, interactive exhibits in an environment centered around ecology and animal conservation is something that I would like to do in the future and this paper gave insight on understanding how to evaluate not only the exhibit but also evaluating the impacts of the surrounding people (visitors, staff, ground and maintenance, etc) and live animal exhibits.
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