Category Archives: Guerrilla Interpretation

Short Fuse, Big Bang

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Guerrilla interpretation confronts, pricks, and unsettles, using the panoply of media to cast interpretive messages wherever an audience lurks.

New technologies do more than advance society, they disrupt. Innovations create new applications and new markets. Often the innovation precedes the market. Fred Smith had to convince businesses of their need for an overnight delivery before he could market FedEx.

Innovations disrupt existing markets, technologies, and applications, displacing those that came earlier. The railroads began struggling during the Great Depression as automobiles and air travel gradually displaced travel by train. Digital cameras replaced film. Digital music is replacing CD’s, which replaced compact cassettes, which replaced 8-track cassettes, which replaced vinyl records. Each new medium erases the one before.

Communications, as an industry, isn’t immune to such disruptions. Print ad revenues are now the lowest they’ve been since 1950. The average American 18+ spends over 11 hours per day using electronic media. Look closely at this infographic from Statista. Note the smartphone use; Americans now spend more time on their smartphones each day than surfing the Internet (a medium only 20 years old itself) from a desktop.

Infographic: Americans Use Electronic Media 11+ Hours A Day | Statista

Deloitte Australia has identified 13 industries comprising 65% of the Australian economy that are facing significant disruption by 2017. The industry most at risk? Information technology and telecommunication. Arts and recreation is another that Deloitte categorizes as being “short fuse, big bang.” Government services, in comparison, is a “long fuse, big bang” industry, a factor that may delay wholesale change within agencies that employ interpreters and interpretive services.

Larry Downes and Paul Nunes, writing in the Harvard Business Review, state that “big-bang disruptions differ from more-traditional innovations not just in degree but in kind. Besides being cheaper than established offerings, they’re also more inventive and better integrated with other products and services. And today many of them exploit consumers’ growing access to product information and ability to contribute to and share it.”

Look at the projected growth in global smartphone traffic, one aspect of this “growing access” to information. The smartphone app (now numbering over 1 million) is one way that information access is facilitated. According to Deloitte, nearly half (48%) of all organizations plan to offer mobile apps to customers within the next three to five years, compared to 18% now.

Infographic: Global Smartphone Traffic to Increase Tenfold by 2019 | Statista

If advertising, marketing, graphic design, and public relations have been upended by the digital revolution, why not interpretation? Are interpreters exempt from this transformation? If these technologies (the New Media) can replace the various media used by interpreters, will they replace the interpreters as well?

Yes, at least in their current form.

Changes have already taken place around the edges. No one types the text for a map or guide on a Remington or IBM Selectric anymore. Try to find a manual typewriter. Interpretive signs are digitally designed. Exhibits often include touch screen technologies. Museums have Facebook pages and a Twitter accounts. Yes, changes have taken place, around the edges.

Yet, interpreters appear to have generally dodged the disruption. The profession is able to skip along its well-worn path as if nothing is amiss. A revolution may be swirling around, but interpretation remains within its vortex, blithely unconcerned. Trainers worry more about which rubber toys to bring to their sessions than how to help interpreters avoid (or, at least, delay) displacement.

The disruptive impacts of digital technology are not evenly distributed, even within a single industry. And, just as different industries are threatened to different degrees by digital technologies, different interpretive functions are shadowed by different risks.

Interpretation is both medium and service. Interpreters are both creator and the created. A front-line interpreter mindlessly mouthing a script is a medium, and at risk of replacement or substitution. The interpretive planner that developed the original content and wrote the script, however, offers a unique creative service, one less easily duplicated or replaced by an algorithm or a bot.

A smartphone is a bring-your-own integrated digital platform. Delivering original content through bring-your-own platforms is disruptive. Personal interpretation is displaced.

A revolution may be swirling around, but interpretation remains within its vortex, blithely unconcerned. Trainers worry more about which rubber toys to bring to their workshops than how to help interpreters avoid (or, at least, delay) displacement.

New technologies disrupt without permission (think Uber). New Media will force new interpretation. The questions still be answered are how and if traditional interpretation will embrace this change and allow it to elevate the profession and practitioners.

Which of these New Media are the most disruptive? Which of these technologies actually advance interpretation? How do interpreters shape these technologies to their advantage? These questions, and more, will be answered our next installment of guerrilla interpretation.

The Sound Bite Society

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Our audience is the Sound Bite Society, one that  demands rudimentary snippets of information delivered by their individual choice of media.

The average American watches 5 hours of television a day. African-Americans? 7.12 hours a day. An average American kid spends about 900 hours in school per year, and watches around 1200 hours of television. Kids ages 6-11 spend about 28 hours a week in front of the TV.  As Rousseau said, “the apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin.” What could be easier than television?

Sheila Murphy (How Television Invented the New Media) declares that “literally and figuratively, television informs how New Media is used.” An argument could just as easily be made that television separates the old from the new, the timeless from the dated, the current from the outdated. If any medium is the message, it’s television.

Attention spans have become abbreviated, reduced to a length only sufficient to snatch a few of the staccato messages being sprayed toward the viewer. Television information is fractured into ephemeral sound bites; once broadcast, the content, consumed or not, evaporates.

Jeffrey Scheuer, in The Sound Bite Society: Television and the American Mind, states that,

  • Television inherently simplifies complex ideas into emotional, self-oriented moral and political impulses;
  • Television therefore impedes public consideration of complexity, ambiguity and connectedness in political and social issues…

Television has shaped recent generations of visitors to our parks, refuges, and museums. As Marshall McLuhan said, “we shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us.” Whether or not we care for this transformation is irrelevant.

Statistic: Average daily media use in the United States from 2010 to 2014 (in minutes) | Statista
Find more statistics at Statista

One way that visitors manifest this transformation is through the devices they choose to access information. The chart above shows the trends in digital media and the various platforms that are currently available. Of equal importance are the programs that are chosen, such as Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Viber, etc.

A guerrilla interpreter is media agnostic. These media are not your children. If they no longer suit the need, they are thrown away and replaced. Traditional media, such as printed guides and interpretive signs, are of no less inherent or intrinsic value than an iPad or an app. Each has a role. Each has a specific user demographic, a specific set of interpretive attributes, and specific instances when the medium is the one of choice.

We are habituated to certain media, limited in our imaginations by the sideboards of convention and tradition. A tombstone label, for example, has its place in a collection. But is “artist-date-medium” the limit of what we wish to communicate to a visitor?

We are habituated to certain media, limited in our imaginations by the sideboards of convention and tradition.

This is not to say that a traditional medium such as a tombstone label doesn’t have its place. A low tech application such as an interpretive panel, for example, is required in locations where connectivity is nonexistent. The same panel in an urban setting may be ignored by those bringing their own devices. The retooling of traditional media may well add contrast value to an installation, heightening public awareness and a sense of familiarity and convention. Tradition by choice (rather than by habit or ritual) has a place in guerrilla interpretation.

Tradition by choice (rather than by habit or ritual) has a place in guerrilla interpretation.

The devices visitors choose to bring is in constant flux, as seen in the chart below. The current trend is toward phablets, devices such as the iPhone 6 Plus that merge phone and tablet into a single device. By next Christmas, the trends may veer off in a new direction that no one can currently see.

Infographic: Phablets See Jump in Popularity This Holiday Season | Statista

Integrate a specific strategy for reaching the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) audience into your interpretive plans. Be sure that content can be easily distributed across multiple interpretive platforms. Torn between mobile web and a mobile app? Have one program feed both. Remember that text written for a website isn’t the same as text for an app. Each medium demands a tailored approach to content development. The messages remain the same, but the form changes with each medium and application. As Bryan Garner said, “the best writers match substance with form. They use language precisely, evocatively, even daringly.” The language of the guerrilla interpreter is provocative and revelatory, as well.

The messages remain the same, but the form changes with each medium and application.

A guerrilla interpreter must keep a finger on these trends. While the messages may  be timeless, the interpretive platforms are transitory. You must be able to nimbly hop from one platform to another, staying focused on the content of the work rather than the platforms that are used to deliver that content. There is no medium that cannot be adapted to an interpreter’s uses.

The interpreter must decide which media best deliver the content to the audience quickly and efficiently. Interpretation is still all about content and the ability to craft the words and imagery that engage a  visitor. The technology is ubiquitous, usually off the shelf, and today’s proprietary approach will be emancipated by tomorrow. The brand of the particular technology or medium is irrelevant.

What does a guerrilla interpreter ask of those developing these media (digital and analog)? Keep the variables low, and band width narrow. Make customization simple. Keep your digital design out of the way of our interpretive content. Interpretive design has a function, and that function is to communicate the message for which the interpretation was conceived. The same is true for your technology.

Most importantly, a guerrilla interpreter wants to pick a product that is already on the shelf.  Development time is dead time. The audience is waiting.

Development time is dead time. The audience is waiting.

 

The Guerrilla’s Eye

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The desktop computer had yet to be developed when I started in this profession. Computers in the 1970s were titanic machines that were shoehorned into specially designed, air-conditioned iceboxes to be fed keypunched paper cards. An IBM 38 could do simple arithmetic and little else (your iPhone can do more).

The design and fabrication of interpretive materials at that time involved an astounding amount of manual effort. Drafts were reviewed manually. Crculating a draft document among reviewers for a “sign off” could take months. Photographs were transferred from slide film to internegatives (Kodak no longer even makes internegative film) or were shot on print film and then physically affixed to the print document (think Scotch tape). A pamphlet or printed guide could easily take several months to produce. Catch a mistake after spending the night pecking away on the IBM? Pull out the bottle of Liquid Paper and dab away.

Digital technology has radically changed our capabilities. But what about our skills? Have these technological advances improved our skill set as well?

We have the ability to design an entire interpretive sign on a computer, but what if we know little about the art of graphic design? We can integrate photographs with the flip of a switch, but a poor quality image still distracts and degrades the end product. We have a marvelous selection of tools at our fingertips, but they are worthless unless we now how to use them.

Exactly what does an interpreter need to succeed? Which skills are necessary to go guerrilla?

Going guerrilla demands a degree of self-containment and self-reliance.

Let’s begin with one of the elementary premises of guerrilla interpretation. Going guerrilla demands a degree of self-containment and self-reliance. The more self-contained the interpreter, the better the chances of success in the profession. A self-contained interpreter is like a gonzo journalist, personally involved in the creation of every interpretive message, plan, and enhancement.

There is rarely a situation where some collaboration isn’t required. But, interpretation at an accelerated pace while retaining thematic integrity demands that much of the work be done by the same person or the same small team. Going guerrilla demands a mastery of interpretation.

Most people come to the profession from the mastery of a resource rather than through a mastery of interpretation.

Most people come to the profession from the mastery of a resource rather than through a mastery of interpretation. Resource interpreters begin as biologists, ecologists, historians, archeologists, and educators, and thus carry a deep knowledge of a specific field. Most enter interpretation through the back door.

Mastery of a specific resource or field is of limited value in guerrilla interpretation. A guerrilla interpreter is confronted and challenged by array of resources, often in the same project. Consider the interpretation of a scenic byway. An interpreter will be faced with an eclectic (and disparate) range of sites and interpretive possibilities along the designated route. The challenge for the interpreter is to find the thematic linkages that will pull them together into a coherent whole.

Guerrilla interpretation is a rapid fire, efficient, self-contained approach that operates at the nexus of the new digital technologies and an interpreter’s skills.

Additionally, while knowledge of a field certainly helps with the initial research and inventory work, that is only one skill that is needed in the wider set. Experts can always be found to assist with research. What is critical for a guerrilla interpreter is the ability to work across the broadest array of topics, and to have the skills to massage these disparate points of interest into a cohesive interpretive strategy. The key is to see the byway with an guerrilla’s eye.

What are the specific skills that are critical to such an interpreter? Start with interpretive planning, interpretive writing, photography, illustration, graphic design, web design, and social media. To be blunt, research isn’t one of them. The academic community provides a wealth of research material to review and incorporate. But, there is a limit to how much research can be incorporated into the work. More importantly, there is a limit to how much needs to be incorporated.

You need to be fluent in all of these skills, although you may only master a few. If required, you should be capable of working with all of these skills independently to developed interpretive enhancements. If needed, you should be able to organize the interpretive strategy, write the content, photograph the subjects, design the signs, and engineer the blog. This gives you the freedom to “go guerrilla,” and literally interpret on the fly.

Guerrilla interpretation is a rapid fire, efficient, self-contained approach that operates at the nexus of the new digital technologies and an interpreter’s skills. Gonzo interpreters may spend the day in the field, then build a blog in their hotel room overnight. Compressed work flows give advantages in both time and cost.

All of this depends on technology and skills. Technology is bought; skills are taught. Which skills are critical to interpreters remaining relevant in the 21st century?

Technology is bought; skills are taught.

Here is a basic skill list that is used in guerrilla interpretation. Skills such a facility design and project analysis that may or may not be creative activities are therefore not included.

  • Research
  • Inventory
  • Interpretive Design
    • Graphic Design
    • Illustration (including photography)
  • Interpretive Writing
  • Interpretive Technologies
  • Interpretive Planning
  • Personal Interpretation

This is the guerrilla skill set, at a minimum. With these skills you can efficiently and expediently develop an interpretive program from inventory to product development.

Are we teaching new interpreters these skills? No. We may hit the high points, but, for the most part, we spend more time on Maslow. A new interpreter can learn Maslow in about five minutes if he or she hasn’t the common sense to know these basic human needs already. But interpretive photography? That skill takes work. That skill takes time.

A guerrilla interpreter is a practitioner, not an academician or a theoretician. Guerrilla interpreters work with people who are practitioners as well. Clients are interested in how interpretation will aid their efforts on the ground, not in journals. This is not to say that the research isn’t important, or that you shouldn’t try to keep abreast of the latest results. The research, however, is at best a means to an end.

An analogous field is journalism (and, not surprisingly, many early interpreters such as Freeman Tilden came from journalism). Journalists study editorial writing, headlines, ethics, and the like. Journalism is a craft, and it is taught by craftsmen.

Interpretation is a craft as well. As such, interpretation involves not just skills but the creativity of art as well (as in artisan). As in any art, there are skills that must be learned before the artist can begin to effectively express themselves through their work.

A guerrilla interpreter believes in the healing powers of practice. Interpreters become better interpreters by interpreting.

A guerrilla interpreter believes in the healing powers of practice. Interpreters become better interpreters by interpreting. Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great photojournalist, once advised those becoming photographers to take 10,000 photos, throw them away, and start again. The same is true for interpretation. Write a few dozen interpretive strategies, throw them away, and start again.

Hone your skills. Practice your craft. These are skills that practitioners need to become the best at their crafts and to stretch the horizons of what is possible.

 

Guerrilla Interpretation – Mobile App Vs Mobile Web

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MDG Advertising has come through with another insightful infographic. Thanks, MDG Advertising! Are you trying to decide between a smartphone app or the mobile web? Here are the numbers. Of course, you can do both. Our Trails2go app, built in Drupal, can be ported to the mobile web. But for those who want to choose, consider the information below.

Should You Build a Mobile App or Mobile Website? [infographic by MDG Advertising]
Infographic by MDG Advertising

Guerrilla Interpretation – Interpretive Furniture

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Panels and signs are interpretive furniture, accouterments added to the interpretive space out of an ill-conceived sense of obligation and custom.

Interpretive signs are dead letter files where good messages go to die.

 

Media are faddish and ephemeral. The half life of any medium has been reduced in this digital age (will anyone enjoy Gutenberg’s run ever again?). What’s in today (Snapchat) evaporates tomorrow (Myspace).

Yet, interpreters hang on to media well after their shelf life has expired. Campfires, anyone? Why?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results…Albert Einstein

Consider the celebrated interpretive panel or sign. No park, museum, or trail is without them. Interpretive signs are de rigueur, a detail demanded by interpretive etiquette. But what do we know about this medium’s efficacy? Do these resin-infused planks actually work?

The research on interpretive panels is admittedly sketchy. Most of the writing on signs and panels is from the agencies trying to convince themselves of their utility.  Cole1 found that visitors spend no longer than 25 seconds reading the text on an interpretive sign. In comparison, the standard radio ads runs about the same length, 30 seconds.

Thompson and Bitgood2 studying visitors to the Birmingham Zoo, reported that,

…signs of 30 words resulted in 15.15% readers; 60-word signs had 14.88% readers; 120-word signs, 11.33%; and 240-word signs, 9.73%.

Exactly what would (or could) you say in 30 words? Yet, the more words on the sign, the less people are willing to read it. A sign of 120 words is common in the interpretive world, but by going to that much text you lose a third of your audience. And, remember, even in the best of circumstances (30 words), 85% of the zoo visitors didn’t read the signs at all.

Hughes and Morrison-Saunders3 found that,

…while the trail-side interpretive signs provided no additional improvement in visitor knowledge, there appeared to be a positive increase in the perception of the site as providing a learning experience.

The Hughes & Morrison-Saunders study from Australia, I suspect, points at  the reason. As they reported, with signs there appears to be a “positive increase in the perception of the site as providing a learning experience.”

Interpretive Furniture

Why do we continue to spend thousands on a sign that virtually no one approaches, no one reads, and, for the few that do take the time to read the content, there is virtually no learning experience or improvement in visitor knowledge? Panels and signs are interpretive furniture, accouterments added to the interpretive space out of an ill-conceived sense of obligation and custom.

Interpretive panels are furniture, accouterments added to the interpretive mix out of a blind sense of obligation. An interpretive sign is like a settee or a couch. Such furniture is required  by a living room to make it living.  The fact that no one actually sits in a settee is irrelevant; its presence is sufficient to bestow credibility on this space dedicated to a particular purpose. Without a couch, or an armchair, or a settee, the space simply cannot be for living. And, without interpretive panels, a park or trail simply cannot be for learning.

In guerrilla interpretation, we relegate all interpretive media to three general classes that are focused on specific audiences. First, there are media and messages that are focused inward. An example is when a  nature center publishes a newsletter for its supporting members. The message are aimed at an inside or internal audience, and engagement is limited to those presumed to be already engaged. Virtually of the engagement efforts of professional organizations such as the National Association for Interpretation (NAI), for example, are for inside engagement.

The next class of media (and messages) are aimed at the in situ audience, those actually visiting the park, museum, or nature center. Most traditional interpretation is in situ. After all, Freeman Tilden wrote for National Park Service interpreters servicing visitors to the national parks. Engagement is haphazard (since visitors do have the right to chose), and restricted to those that (1) actually take the time to visit, and (2) actually take the time to read, view, or listen to the interpretation. Engagement is admittedly more expansive than media and messages that are internal, but still limited when compared to the general public.

audiences
The final class or group of media and messages are ex situ, and target the external public. The external market is certainly the most significant, but this audience also has the most tenuous connection to and interest in the park, museum, or trail being interpreted. Yet, growth (membership, support, visitation) is dependent on reaching this audience (internal and in situ audiences are already engaged). Equally important, many of the factors that impact the sustainability of a park, museum, and trail (funding, political will) depend on the interests of the general public.

In guerrilla interpretation, we prioritize our interpretation based on potential audiences. Those media that are capable of reaching across these audiences (internal, in situ, ex situ) have a higher return on investment and thus a higher priority than those that do not. A membership newsletter has a low return based on audience size, while a blog or website can reach from the membership to the general public. An interpretive sign is limited to an audience that actually makes the investment in a visit, while a smartphone app, such as Trails2go, can reach from those who visit to those in the general public that are only toying with the idea.

All is not lost for the cherished wayside exhibit or interpretive sign. Static interpretive enhancements (interpretive platforms) can be improved. Placement (traffic points, on trail), bright colors, high imagery, content chunking, and low word counts are traditional ways to increase the use of interpretive panels.

But, panels can also be guerrillized. Otherwise, interpretive signs are dead letter files, places where good messages go to die. Begin with the notion that while your messages may be lasting (you certainly would like for them to be), your interpretative media and platforms are transitory. A guerrilla interpreter works to make sure that the messages, rather than the signs, are durable. Why would you ever want to install a sign that will last 15 or 20 years? Will you not have something new to say over those decades?

images (1)Message freshening is particularly important in facilities and sites with significant repeat visitation. Rather than investing in signs that will outlast your career, install frames and rotate signs on a regular basis. Standardize and flatten design. New digital printing techniques offer the guerrilla interpreter a wide array of materials that can be used to create signs at a fraction of the cost of the traditional high-pressure resin or metal signs. Signs can be interlinked with the broader interpretive system through bar codes, QR codes, Clickable Paper, beacons, etc. Upload the sign designs as PDFs to your website, making them available to a broader audience.

Interpretive platforms such as signs and wayside exhibits are a low priority in guerrilla interpretation. Cost is high; return on investment is low. But, for those who are committed to these archaic platforms, be sure that they are guerrillized to broaden the audiences they potentially reach. And, keep the cost low. The notion of investing $2000 or $2500 in a single sign that few will read is difficult (impossible, really) to justify, guerrillized or not.

Cole, D.N., Hammond, T.P. and McCool, S.F. (1997) Information quantity and communication effectiveness: Low-impact messages on wilderness trail-side bulletin boards. Leisure Sciences 19, 59–72.

The data from this study were part of the first author’s master’s thesis
in psychology at Jacksonville State University.

Hughes, M.J. and Morrison-Saunders, A. (2002) Impact of Trail-side Interpretive Signs on Visitor Knowledge. Journal of Ecotourism Vol. 1, Nos. 2&3,.