Skip to content
  • FR
FR
  • About us
    Building, illuminated glass towers on either side of an old, square, stone building.

    About us

    We're here to help you understand what the Bank of Canada does and how it matters to you.

    About the Bank of Canada

    Find out what the Bank does, who runs the Bank and how it is separate from the political process.

    Connect with us

    We’d love to hear from you! Contact us by email, phone or mail—or join us on social media.

  • Visit

    Visit

    • Plan your visit
    • Accessibility and special needs
    • Code of conduct
    • COVID-19 protocols

    Sensory Sundays

    We’re turning down the lights and the volume for our sensory-sensitive visitors—explore the Museum using more than eyes and ears.

    Connect with us

    We’d love to hear from you! Contact us by email, phone or mail—or join us on social media.

  • Explore

    Exhibitions

    • Permanent exhibition
    • Special exhibitions
    • Travelling exhibitions
    • Past exhibitions

    Blog

    Collection

    • About the Collection
    • Collection Services
    • Canadian Bank Notes Series
    • Search the Collection

    New acquisitions—2024 edition

    Bank of Canada Museum’s acquisitions in 2024 highlight the relationships that shape the National Currency Collection.

  • Learn

    Learn

    • Activities and games
    • Education blog
    • External resources
    • Lesson plans
    • School programs
    • Video discussion guides
    • Upcoming webinars

    Entrepreneurship: Kids edition

    Learn from the experiences of successful young entrepreneurs, then create your own business model and pitch your business.

    You are the economy

    A set of six lessons to explore economics with your students.

  • Home
  • The Museum Blog

Museum Reconstruction - Part 8

By: Graham Iddon


June 22, 2017
Share this page on Facebook
Share this page on Facebook
Share this page on X
Share this page on X
Share this page on LinkedIn
Share this page on LinkedIn
Share this page on Google Classroom Created with Sketch.
Share this page on Google Classroom
Share this page by email
Share this page by email

Test, test, repeat

I imagine many organizations in Ottawa are thinking that it would be nice if the first of July was just a little farther off—like September, maybe. Sure, we too could benefit from more time before our opening, but the stress of a looming deadline just makes you stronger, right? The Museum is, for all intents and purposes, complete. The last few stragglers among our artifacts are ready for installation and the interactives and digital labels are bulking up with the final software and data in them, so it’s all there, functional and looking fantastic.

Highly digital exhibitions can have all sorts of little problems lurking inside them. These young volunteers helped us test our Decoding E-Money exhibition last year.

For a couple of weeks, now, technicians have been pulling levers, cranking wheels and swiping and tapping every touch panel in the Museum and will continue do so until the doors officially open. All that is well and good, but what about getting a sense of how people who know nothing about the Museum would respond to the interactives and understand the content? How might we do that before they arrive so we can make those little tweaks and adjustments that help to create that “it just works” feeling?

We invited teens from Mother Teresa and Sir Guy Carleton high schools in Ottawa to test our facility.

The first thing you do at our museum is create an alias and a little cartoon character (avatar) to accompany you on your digital journey.

At the end of May we invited students from local schools to come into the Museum and, ready or not, take it for a spin around the block. Twenty teenagers participated, bringing with them a broad range of learning styles and curiosity (or not) in the Bank and economics. They were at the younger end of our primary target audience (15–25) and a predictably difficult demographic to attract to this kind of subject. At the very least, we could rely on their frankness.

Demonstrating the virtuoso tap and swipe skills typical of their generation, students moved quickly through the exhibits.

Some of our testers wanted to know more about the processes behind such interactive stations as this one demonstrating the payments system.

Although most of the hands-on aspects of the Museum were designed for just this sort of audience, it was still amazing to watch how naturally the kids manipulated the touch panels. They seemed to instinctively know when to swipe and tap, whereas duffers like me often had to pause and think it through. It was most interesting, though, to see what captured their attention. We have one unit that is a full-on video game which of course made a hit. But a surprising number of kids found the plumbing-themed interactive that helps to introduce the Bank’s role in maintaining the safe and efficient operation of the key elements of the financial system very absorbing—and quite a few really got caught up in the foreign currency area of the artifact display cases.

The radio frequency ID bracelets were also very popular. This wearable technology carries visitors’ language preferences as well as their aliases and the little cartoon avatars they build before entering the gallery. For the interactives, visitors just have to tap their bracelets on a bright circle to have the unit operate in their chosen (official) language and for many of the stations, visitors’ avatars and aliases will also pop up. Our guests really liked this aspect and wanted to see their little characters showing up wherever they logged in with a bracelet—even in videos alongside the Governor. Something we didn’t see coming: the students didn’t like saying goodbye to their avatars. They wanted some means of taking them home: more food for thought.

One of the hundreds of combinations of details visitors can assemble for their avatars.

Likes and dislikes were explored more deeply at an afternoon de-briefing in the “IdeaSpace,” the Bank’s highly flexible, and very comfortable, meeting and brainstorming centre. Enlarged floorplans of the Museum were tacked on the walls and the students were asked to place sticky notes on features they really liked or those they didn’t, as well as where they encountered problems.

A dozen kids at a time participated in our testing.

students in a lounge-like meeting space

The students were divided into groups and were able to work in separate areas to brainstorm and compare experiences.

There was no shortage of responses and ideas.

All sorts of comments popped up about seating, lighting and sound levels, placements of signage and computer performance. These were the sort of practical things one expects to discover before opening day. What was gratifying was the interest the kids had in learning more about the topics that had been “gamified.” Where they were asked to play a game or adjust levers and wheels, they often wanted more background information on the subject or wanted the interactive’s metaphor more deeply explained. (Interest had been piqued!) Also, for a generation that is more at home with a smartphone than a book, it was interesting to see that they still wanted and expected to see traditional, printed labels beside the artifacts.

This was a very valuable experience for us and we will be doing more such testing sessions in the future. Many of the suggestions we can act upon immediately; some will have to wait for a while—like the one in which students recommended that the inflation control interactive have four levels: beginner, intermediate, expert and insane. We’ll speak to our technology team about that one after opening day.

Turquoise and purple are our new brand colours. Look for them on signage, advertising and even the front doors of the Museum.

Among other events preceding our opening day was our participation in Doors Open Ottawa 2017. Relax, our doors were not actually open on 4 June; Canada Day is still our opening day. However, we took the opportunity to provide people with a virtual look at the Museum.

Our tag line embodies our intention of putting visitors in the centre of their own economic story.

One of our new museum guides provides her chatty spiel to Doors Open visitors in the Bank’s InfoCentre, a newspaper and media resource centre.

The Bank invited the public into its spectacular 12-story atrium, the “Knowledge” information centre and the beautiful 1938 entrance hall with its mulicoloured marble finishes and art deco details. The tour included a stop at the Museum’s kiosk where visitors were given a little introductory chat about the Museum in addition to being shown a video. The video consisted mostly of conceptual images, but they are accurate ones and very good for raising expectations and piquing curiosity. In all, more than 750 people participated in the Bank’s Doors Open event and the Museum got some great news coverage (sorry, English only). On Canada Day, instead of doors open, it will be open doors—nothing virtual about it. Come check us out.

We want to hear from you! Do you have an idea for a blog post you’d like to see?
Content type(s): Blog posts

Subscribe to The Museum Blog
The Museum Blog

June 16, 2017

The Yap Stone Returns

By: Graham Iddon


For us, its removal from the Garden Court dramatically marked the Currency Museum’s closing. The big stone’s return now performs the opposite role for the new Bank of Canada Museum—heralding its opening.
Content type(s): Blog posts
June 9, 2017

A New Ten on the Block

By: Graham Iddon


In a modern twist, Governor Stephen S. Poloz took a “selfie” while holding a C150 note before meeting up with the Honourable Ginette Petipas Taylor for the main photo op.
Content type(s): Blog posts
May 30, 2017

New Acquisitions

By: Paul S. Berry


Although never released for circulation, these two pieces were part of the first official initiative to mint coins in Canada.
Content type(s): Blog posts
April 21, 2017

150 Years Since Confederation

By: Graham Iddon


Canada’s cultural and regional diversity is a key part of our nation’s identity. However, it’s an enormous challenge to represent such concepts on a 7 by 15 centimetre piece of polymer.
Content type(s): Blog posts
April 11, 2017

Museum Reconstruction – Part 7

By: Graham Iddon


It’s a very flexible design and right now our graphics team is busy adapting it to a dozen different uses and formats.
Content type(s): Blog posts
March 31, 2017

Coins from a nation that wasn’t: Araucania and Patagonia

By: David Bergeron


In the middle of the 19th century, a French lawyer and adventurer named d’Antoine de Tounens became fascinated by the Mapuche people of the Patagonia region of South America. At the time, they were struggling to protect their ancestral lands, their identity and their culture from colonial expansion by the governments of Chile and Argentina.
Content type(s): Blog posts
March 7, 2017

Museum Reconstruction - Part 6

By: Graham Iddon


So how’s the Bank of Canada Museum progressing? Everything seems to be ticking along just fine, thanks.
Content type(s): Blog posts
February 8, 2017

Japanese hansatsu: bookmark money

By: Paul S. Berry


Often referred to as “bookmark money” because of their narrow, vertical format, Japanese hansatsu were among the world’s most distinctive currencies.
Content type(s): Blog posts
December 23, 2016

Is That Blitzen on Our Quarter?

By: Graham Iddon


Well into my adulthood, I had assumed that the noble beast gracing the reverse side of our quarters was a moose. Clearly, I was not a terribly observant coin collector.
Content type(s): Blog posts
December 21, 2016

A Bank NOTE-able Woman III

By: Graham Iddon


Desmond truly exemplifies a Canadian who has overcome barriers, is inspirational to others, has made a positive change to society and in so doing, left a lasting legacy.
Content type(s): Blog posts
December 1, 2016

Why We are Not the Currency Museum

By: Graham Iddon


But a few years before it closed, the Currency Museum officially became an arm of the Communications Department. And this was the crucial factor that would change the future mission of the Museum.
Content type(s): Blog posts
November 15, 2016

A Field Trip to Montréal and the MTM Auction: 2

By: Paul S. Berry


Several parties were bidding on lot #14 until it reached $10,000, at which point the contest was only between me and the gentleman who had underbid the previous lot.
Content type(s): Blog posts
November 2, 2016

A Field Trip to Montréal and the MTM Auction: 1

By: Paul S. Berry


The sale room was a hive of activity. About 20 people sat at tables scrutinizing lots, heads bent down with magnifying glasses pressed close to their faces.
Content type(s): Blog posts
September 29, 2016

Royal Canadian Numismatic Association

By: David Bergeron


The 63rd annual convention of the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association (RCNA)—Canada’s money collector show—was held in Ottawa from 20-24 July 2016.
Content type(s): Blog posts
August 30, 2016

Gold Rush! and Mining the Miners

By: Graham Iddon


Mining the Miners is our third temporary exhibition at the CMH (we reopen in 2017) and it is indeed about the Klondike gold rush. It’s always nice to be able to dovetail our exhibits with those of our host.
Content type(s): Blog posts
  • « Previous
  • 1
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 11
  • Next »
Go To Page

30 Bank Street
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0G9, CANADA
613‑782‑8914

  • Things to do

  • Plan your visit
  • Find educational resources
  • Search the Collection
  • Connect with us
  • Things to see

  • Canadian bank notes
  • Exhibitions
  • Blog
  • Videos
  • Things to know

  • Accessibility and special needs
  • Careers
  • Code of conduct
  • COVID-19 protocols
  • Privacy
  • Social media
●●
Bank of Canada Museum

Visit the Bank of Canada web site ›

We use cookies to help us keep improving this website.

Accept and continue