Ross Diaz
Google
This museum suffers from enormous Tech Debt. It seems relatively new, but already most of the Interactive features, primarily the audio commentary and the sports simulators, are either not functioning or poorly designed. Interactive badge for personalized experience is needlessly complicated and exclusionary of children. Why aren't kids permitted to have their own profiles? Why make them glom on to their parents profile? When parent activates an interactive display for their kid and moves more than half a step away, it cancels the in-progress session for the kid! After this happened twice we gave up on the interactive elements. The interactive kids museum in my city of San Antonio manages the interactive/profile based experience in a much better way. Without the functioning audio and frustrating interactive elements, I felt like we only got the barest minimum that could have been delivered with this experience. I wanted to see larger and more in depth exhibits about the Miracle on Ice, Jesse Owens at the Berlin Games, and maybe features on heroes of our gymnastics, swimming, and skiing programs. Show me what it is like to train, give me some multimedia about what kind of personal and financial sacrifices are made by olympians. While the exhibit and walk through design needs to be re-worked, at least the collections are impressive, like the assortment of torches, the Miracle on Ice scoreboard, and the collection of medals were very memorable. They need to simplify this experience so that it works for everyone. Less problematic interactivity, more passive multimedia. The stories, audio, and visuals are the real treasure here, don't obfuscate it behind a bunch of clunky, non-working, slooooow interactivity.