Best Practices for Museum and Exhibition VR Experiences

2/20/2018

Museums are amazing places, you can get lost in the details learning about a dinosaur toe bone and be in awe at the scale of the animal all at the same time. However making a museum engaging, educational and fun is a skill, we’ve got some great experience doing this and here are our Top 5 tips to make Virtual Reality (VR) engaging in a museum.

1. Make moving simple/remove teleporting:
   This is tricky, but you only have a short amount of time to get your audience to grips with the controls so take teleporting out, find another way to move them – be inventive.
2. Keep the controls simple:
   Like Super Simple, again your audience may only use the system once so everything needs to be intuitive, no hidden menus, special combos just plain simple point and click.
3. Integrate a guide:
   Don’t assume the person will know what to do or why they’re in the VR environment, build in a guide, visual, vocal, forced. Help your audience explore what you want them to see and learn.
4. Gamification:
   Make it fun and nothing's more fun than a quick “who can score the most” game. Build it in, learning through play is key.
5. Keep the focus on the message:
   It’s easy in VR to get distracted by everything that is possible to do, but ask yourself “do I need to do that?” or are you just creating distractions.
   To learn what we can do for you and your museum drop us a line! – We’re always happy to talk on the phone.

Author

Elliot & the team have been creating interactive exhibits for over 15 years and are now applying that knowledge to VR & AR exhibits.