Recruiting Interactive: The Value of Prototyping
This activity is about the recruitment efforts used by USS Constitution’s officers to fill her crew ranks.
Pardon Mawney Whipple went to Boston to recruit a crew for USS Constitution in 1812, where he set up a ‘house of rendezvous’ in a local establishment. Boston was a maritime community, and both green hands and experienced sailors signed up with Whipple for two years at sea aboard USS Constitution.
Goals
We wanted the activity of signing up to:
- Get visitors thinking about why they would or would not sign up as a sailor in 1812
- Introduce visitors to some of the realities of life aboard a warship in 1812
- Organize the experience visitors would have in the rest of the exhibition
Description
The exhibit is set in a recreation of a “house of rendezvous,” a tavern-like place where naval officers would judge the seaworthiness of prospective sailors. In the original version visitors asked questions of each other a recruiter might ask a sailor interested in USS Constitution in 1812. During early testing family visitors demanded to play a particular role. Now one visitor plays the recruiter, the other plays the recruit. They sit on opposite sides of a table on which there are table tents (flipbooks) with questions and related images.
The recruiter flips through the table tent, asking questions of the recruit. At the end of the questioning the recruiter tallies the recruit’s score, finds his or her degree of seaworthiness, and encourages the recruit to sign on as a sailor (for the purposes of the exhibit all hands are accepted). Visitors are then encouraged to switch roles and try it again.
House of Rendezvous
One visitor plays the recruiter, the
other plays the recruit.
Instructions
On tables: Recruiting Sailors in 1812
- Sit down opposite each other and flip cards to "start."
- Use a tally sheet to record your responses.
- Take turns asking the recruiter's questions and answering as the recruit! Welcome aboard!
On table tents: on recruit's side
- You are being recruited! The person opposite you will ask you questions about your seaworthy skills.
- Write your answers on the tally sheet.
- When done, switch seats and you get to ask the recruiter's questions.
On table tents: on recruiter's side
- You are the recruiter! Ask the person opposite you the questions on the cards.
- Their answers go on a tally sheet.
- When done, switch seats and you get to answer the recruiter's questions!
Materials
- A simple table tent made of MDF. Connected to the top are a number of pages made by sewing a strip of tyvek to a double-sided laminated sheet.
- Table and benches, which were significantly more expensive than the interactive itself.
- Score sheets, which need to be restocked.
- Golf pencils, which need to be restocked.
Visitors' comments
- “If we had read the instructions it would have been easier.”
- “More visual stuff like hard tack or a model of a ship—something to want to make you sit down and do the activity would be good.”
- “Have a rope with a knot there because kids like hands-on stuff.”
- “I like the idea, it sparked conversation and interest.”
- “The pictures are great.”
- “Make a few more questions, they were lots of fun!”
The Lesson: Poster child for the value of prototyping
We wanted family members to take turns asking each other recruiting questions like, “Have you ever swung in a hammock? Are you willing to do it next to 200 of your closest friends who haven’t taken a bath in awhile?” We hoped to encourage conversation about joining the ship’s crew in 1812 and provide an advanced organizer for the exhibition. The interactive met the PISEC criteria: it was multi-sided, multi-outcome, contained no pieces of text longer than 50 words, and had fun content. The problem? For starters families didn’t know what to do - even when the researchers tried to explain the interactive.
In just a few days of prototyping a procedure emerged. Our two researchers asked 10 or so families to try the interactive and recorded their feedback. We made changes on paper and taped them to the interactive. The next day we repeated the process. In less than two weeks the team significantly changed family satisfaction. In the beginning, half of the families surveyed rated the activity a 3 or less out of 5 stars. We decided to stop prototyping when families rated the activity an average of 4.5 out of 5. The recruiting interactive is now very popular with our visitors. In later tracking studies visitors spent an average of 7 minutes in the recruiting area.
