Daily Report: August 30, 2017

Date: 2017.08.30
Host: Danbee

Day start: 09h53
Lunch break start: 12h30
Lunch break end: 13h30
Day end: 16h00

# of “good” participants: 107
Estimated average age group: all ages today

Brief description of the day: Very busy day! Unexpected, because it’s a week day. I tried not to actively busk for participants; I wanted to see how many people would approach on their own accord. This worked with variable success. There were many small children who would approach and stare without ever initiating an interaction; others would point at the exhibit and ask their parent loudly, “what is that?” and never bother asking me. Yet, somehow a steady stream of visitors tried out the exhibit and I had no problem reaching 100 participants.

We were also visited today by some folks from Merlin Entertainments (the big bosses). I gave them the exhibit schpiel, and 2 of them participated in the experiment.

Best comment: One family today totally made the connection between bigger pupils in younger people, and the idea of “cognitive load” – that is, when you see something new, exciting, unexpected, or anything unusual in a way that requires more effort on your part to process or understand what it is you’re seeing, then your pupils dilate. They then made the jump, without any help from me, that our pupils dilating in the dark could also be explained under the same theory, and we talked about how subjectively, things can “look so different in the dark, even familiar faces and places.” It was super satisfying to have this conversation, where the visitors were making the connections without me having to tell them.