Physical/Digital Site Comparative Review: Ford’s Theatre

For this assignment I traveled to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. and went to the Museum inside. I decided that this would be a good place to study for this project because of its historical content and fame but also what it’s digital presence is currently.

The audience could be identified as persons wanting to know more historical background of Lincoln, his life, the Civil War, and his assassination, and death. They could very well be audience member who was able to have a free ticket to the museum with their purchase of a show performance and it is available to them one hour before the show starts. I was in the latter category for this trip, but I’ve been in the former category since I started attending shows here about a year ago.

As I was going through the museum in the basement of Ford’s Theatre, the first part that the audience gets to would be a area that has motion-activated audio explanations about an artifact.

As I continued on in the museum, I noticed around me that various people were standing and reading and there was little interaction with the artifacts and the people. The museum did have History Channel video clips that the audience could take a moment to sit and listen. The audience could touch statues, pull out a drawer or two, or possibly listen to an audio guide as you went along but it was mostly reading panels of information put in front of you silently to yourself.

The layout of the space has the audience follow a general direction, but it became confusing as to whether I should start on the left or right side as I continued through the exhibit. This could also be a positive in the sense that if there was a huge crowd of people that day, they are not stuck behind people to move along. There might have been a docent in the museum but when I attended, they did not announce themselves, so I assumed it was at your own pace.

The physical exhibit looked a little outdated by 15 -20 years so I would update it to make it look more modern. I would change it by adding in more digital touchscreens and 3-D printed artifacts that the audience can touch but overall some more stimulating activity to break up some of the reading.

The digital aspect to the Ford’s Theatre Museum is sparse. The argument that the digital website is trying to make is to learn more about Ford’s assassination and why it happened. It has digitization of some of the key artifacts available at the physical site and a virtual tour through Google. One artifact would be the clothing that Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theatre on the night that he was assassinated. The user clicks on the link to learn more and they read more text about the artifact in its historical context and then is invited to click on a picture of it with pop-up windows with blurbs of information. The interaction between the digital audience and the artifacts and the museum are limited.

The materials available on the website are not that different from it in the physical site. In this present time, sometimes it would be better to go to the website and interact with the artifacts but in this case, if you wish to learn more about Lincoln’s assassination then it would be better to visit the physical site. The website is easy to navigate but that is only because there are little interaction and exhibits available on the website for the user.

I would change the digital website to add more content about the assassination, whether through newspapers at the time, more digitized artifacts, interactive content, for example. where the user has to decide what events happened when and its historical significance by looking at primary sources.

The Ford’s Theatre Museum both physically and digitally achieved its purpose of informing the audience about what happened here that changed the world thereafter.