Museum Vist the First

Skin Sensor: What Makes You Sweat
Last week we visited the Boston Museum of Science as a class. The impetus for this trip was to identify, examine and evaluate some applications of TUIs. After exploring as a group, talking with some of the museum staff, and learning about the production and testing process of a typical museum exhibit we were instructed to split up and identify and evaluate several exhibits based on some specific criteria.

I found an exhibit that seemed interesting. It was titled: Skin Sensor:What Makes You Sweat?
As can be seen in the above image, the interface consisted of a carousel, a monitor a set of sensors designed for one's hand, a panel of four buttons and some written information. The Exhibit simply encouraged its users to explore the biological reaction to different mental stimuli.

The idea is that a user sits in the chair in front of the the monitor and places their pointer and middle finger on the moisture sensors. Assuming the last user didn't leave the machine running, the user presses the first button on the far right labeled start and is immediately met with a live updating graph of the moisture their body is producing as a function of time.


The instructions, pictured left, encourages users to think about specific people or things, to close there eyes and relax, to laugh and to try their own ideas and see how the graph behaves differently.

The text used on the instructions and the height of the chair indicate that this exhibit is targeted towards a fairly young-elementary school audience, but the exhibit was intriging enough that it certianly caught my attention.

There were a few interesting features of the exhibit that augmented the central exercise that was clearly the purpose of the exhibit. On the aforementioned carousel there was a device with recorded sounds. The idea was to play the sounds and see how your perspiration levels responded to the different inputs. Additionally, there was a button that allowed you to mark a point on the graph- presumably to compare ones reaction to different stimuli with greater ease. There was also and audio feedback button and a more information button-neither of which seemed to do anything.

The idea behind this exhibit is to simply spark interest for further exploration. There is no information or explanation given at the exhibit. The title their refers more to the stimuli that make one sweat rather than the reasons that make one sweat.

In general I found this exhibit to be an interesting one. It did not require reading. It was simple to figure out simply by interacting with the interface. It might be more successful as a teaching tool if there was some attempt at a general explanation for some of the principles behind sweating, but it is possible that if the explanation was communicated in some way other than text or audio some of the appeal associated with the simplicity of the exhibit might be lost.

The exhibit has fallen into some disrepair, but it still conveys its same general message. A more attractive interface might have gone a long way towards getting it some more attention also.