GETTING THE MOST WITH THE FEWEST WORDS - WAYS TO SIMPLIFY THE CONTENT OF EXHIBITIONS, BUT INCREASE THE IMPACT

The abundance of information is a characteristic of the times we live in; however, so many information is not always our friend. There is a constant need for us to select, filter and synthesize the right volume and quality of the information that we actually desire. Beside and because of this, our time restrictions seem to be ever increasing. Today's devices - TVs, smartphones or computers opened up like never before the way we communicate and exchange knowledge - there is even no more limitation on the quantity or quality (eventually) of information we produce. Considering all these, we now face a major challenge in order to advance: to learn to communicate and get information efficiently.

For some decades of years, the purpose of museums and exhibitions was well established within the society: to provide reliable information on specific themes to a wide auditorium. By showing and explaining various exhibits (from documents to relics), ideas or verified facts, the exchange of proper information was assured. However - times have changed. People are now in a hurry or lose their focus easily, find unattractive and long textual information to much to even bother reading and are mainly interested in hands-on, interactive or famous exhibits. Therefore, the way information is disseminated must be reconsidered. Since we can't give up all the readable information, we need to understand how to make it attractive, and also to understand that an exhibition should not be nowadays a place where you are bombarded with information - but a place that stimulates you to acknowledge the need of knowledge. Further information can very well be forwarded nowadays on internet, digital books or video channels.

Through this paper we aim to study the means of simplifying the information to be presented within museums or exhibitions, in a way that is not intrusive to the actual educational purpose that these have to fulfil, but enhance the impact on visitors. We confront with a specific task that represents a practical demonstration: the simplification of the content to be presented within an earthquake exhibition - MOBEE (MOBile Earthquake Exhibition), which relies on a modular, adaptable configuration. We will present how the large volume of information that is considered compulsory by the scientists that put them together can be reduced, through the simplification of words and their number (concision rules), illustrations and logical schemes, removal/forwarding to the webpage or exhibition displays of unnecessary text or non-formal dissemination. Also, we analyse what volume of information should be contained by audio guides. The impact of these techniques are evaluated also by the target audience of the exhibition.

The goal of our research consists in finding and applying good practices for transmitting more efficiently information within an exhibition, in order to raise the impact on visitors. This can be accomplished by highlighting the key features and concepts better and by keeping the information apparently simple, but possibly complex - depending on visitor's requests.