Telling stories, making connections, and striving for balance in designing museum exhibition experiences: A case study at the Chicago History Museum

The purpose of this study was to qualitatively examine museum exhibition design processes at a case study museum. Both the overall design and development process and accommodations made for diverse visitors within this process were investigated. The Chicago History Museum (CHM) was purposefully selected as the case museum for the study because of its size, location and recent extensive redesign efforts. A total of seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted as part of the study --sixteen with CHM staff members and one with an outside design consultant involved with a major exhibition redesign project at the Museum. The interview questions were formulated based on the research questions and additional framing questions to situate the context of the research in terms of (1) exhibition design practices and technology implementation and (2) visitor accommodations and educational value of exhibitions.;Coding and analysis of the interview data resulted in identification of three main themes which surfaced on multiple layers related to the exhibition process at the CHM: (1) creating identity/telling a story, (2) making personal connections, and (3) striving for balance. There were no clear boundaries for these themes; rather they are blurred, overlapping, and indistinct from one another. This overlap and crossover of ideas from one theme to another strengthens the individual themes as well as the overall impact across themes---making the findings more interconnected and complete. The findings of this study showed the sum of individual parts far exceeds the parts themselves on many levels in the design process.;The cross-disciplinary nature of this study brought to light implications and significance to a variety of fields---museology (museum studies), instructional technology, and visual literacy. This study provided a rich set of data about a single institution. However, future research conducted with a similar qualitative methodology at a variety of case museums could provide a comparison of processes and approaches across multiple institutions. Additionally, further research could be done to explore the following topics: audience reactions to the exhibitions/museum, interrelationship between programming and exhibitions, marketing and visitor appeal, exhibition budget and resources, media and technology for diverse visitors, and organizational learning in museums.