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I have found that locating videos in the open near another quiet, 
reflective exhibit where visitors linger a long time leads to a lot of 
"grazing" as people look up, notice the video, and find themselves 
watching parts of it.  Some visitors (<25%) will sit at the benches in 
front of the video cabinets and watch an entire 2-7 minute fast-paced 
video, but many more adults and kids "graze" and watch parts of the 
video while seated nearby and tiling with pattern blocks in Tech City, 
or using magnifiers with lots of samples in It's a Nano World.  

The 7-minute video "Ask an Engineer" for Tech City was divided into five 
~1 minute segments with a teen interviewing a different real engineer 
(diverse, cool, and interesting engineers-- yes folks, they really 
exist), so people could watch one or more segments.  It was also 
fast-paced, carefully planned and scripted to appeal to our 
middle-school target audience, etc. etc.

Kathy Krafft
Director of Exhibits
Sciencenter
Ithaca, NY

> Leticia, I did an informal study at the Boston Museum of Science many  
> years ago and found that it is hard to get visitors to watch a video  
> for more than 30 seconds unless (1) the experience is interactive or  
> (2) they can sit down.  I watched a couple of hundred visitors at six  
> different exhibits, and saw almost no one watch for as much as a full  
> minute, even although the videos were typically much longer than 
> that.   Chuck Howarth
>
> On May 20, 2005, at 8:07 AM, Pérez Castellanos Leticia wrote:
>
>> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
>> Centers
>> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
>> institutions.
>> *********************************************************************** 
>> ******
>>
>> Hi everybody! We have a discussion here in the office about what 
>> time  is ideal for videos that people would watch in the museum 
>> floor, is  not a theater, people will watch them standing.
>>
>>
>>

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