THE HUMAN FACTOR
(in collaboration with Sarah Angliss and Will Jackson 1999)
The ergonomics society approached the Science Museum to hold
an exhibition to mark their 50th
anniversary, and the museum approached me
to produce some exhibit ideas and cartoons to help them raise
funding. I quickly realised that the subject would make a good exhibition – there
were lots of simple experiments that could be made into interactive exhibits, and lots of
tabloid surprising facts.
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To my amazement, the Ergonomics society managed to raise the
sponsorship for it all to go ahead (even though Peter Trevitt (the science museum
interactive exhibit manager) had persuaded me to increase my costings by 50%) to £140k.
Peter turned out to be right – I couldn’t have produced the exhibition for the
original budget.
With the funding in place, I
took on the job of building the exhibition with Sarah
Angliss and Will Jackson as partners. I’m
amazed how much we all managed to produce in little over two months. |
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view of part of the exhibition (total area 65 by 25 ft)
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Loosely based on crash test dummies and diagrams in ergonomics textbooks,
I made these dummies. Some featured in the exhibits, and some stood on top
of the exhibition walls, occasionally twitching their heads or hands.  |
Realising the power
of the collaboration between me, Sarah and Will, we formed ourselves into Mongrel Media
after the exhibition opened, and looked for new opportunities (see The Eden Project).
The exhibition carried on to Manchester after leaving the Science Museum and is in Lisbon
from March-December 2002. |
Human factor exhibits
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