The day after the Winchester Mystery House visit, the entire family & visiting relatives continued the sightseeing frenzy and went to the Exploratorium and Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. My sister recommended visiting the museum because she excitedly wanted to see the fake-toilet-real-drinking-fountain that was photographed to promote the exhibition.
As usual, I was nonchalant about it and acted as if I knew everything about psychology and social norms and why it feels weird to drink out of a fake but nonetheless real-looking toilet. But since it was a family outing, I didn’t have to pay to get in. And I was a rediscovered science geek, so I didn’t poo-poo the suggestion.
Turns out that it was still the same exhibition that I visited this past summer, so I was a little disappointed that this “cool” exhibition my sister was so excited about has been here for at least four months. But it does give me another chance to check out the stuff that I didn’t get to last time.
Walk on Gravel
Two of the pieces that I thought were really interesting were both at the “Listen” section upstairs. One was a little interactive experiment of how quietly you can walk on a gravel path. There’s a screen that shows your score in golf number land; the higher the score, the less successful you are. When I started, I thought I could do a good job, but as I got to the middle section of the path, there seemed to be a lot more gravel or something that just made you make a lot more noise than you thought you would. The score climbed really high really fast at that point, so I gave up and stomped on the gravel and left, which was just as fun.
Blind Experience
The other piece was a listening exercise where you put on headphones and listen to a supposed blind man narrating his navigation through downtown San Francisco near and at the BART subway station. It was an eye-opening (irony recognized and not intended) experience! I couldn’t believe how much harder it is for a blind person to get around with just sound. I mean, they also have smell and touch to work with, but you pretty much have to follow the sound to get where you want to go. There were a few times when the man asked me if I could hear a sound that he uses to know where to turn or stop or whatever, and I couldn’t hear it because the sounds were so faint or inaudible for me.
I did, however, recognize some of the distinct BART sounds, such as the performing musician at the station, whom the blind man used to figure out where to turn, and the ticketing machines with their unique pings and pongs without which a blind person wouldn’t know if the machine has responded or frozen, as well as the robotic man’s or woman’s voice announcing the arrival of certain trains on certain platforms that, to me, sounds annoyingly frequent, yet to the blind, it sounds always reassuring.
Accessibility
Such minor and simple (and sometimes thought to be irritating) audio characteristics of everyday activities turn out to be so essential for some people. It’s easy for most of us do “just enough” to satisfy our needs, that “everyone will understand this airport signage because it’s in English and this is an English-speaking country,” or that “this web site works fine because the downloaded script font looks perfect on this browser on this operating system on this computer,” but sometimes, it’s important to think about others and walk in their shoes. This way, you could learn something new and grow as a better person and/or a better designer.
Flush.
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