Chapter 2: Unexpected

The second principle of sticky ideas is being UNEXPECTED. How do I get people's attention and how do I keep it are two questions that are at the center of this concept of "unexpectedness." Let's begin with how to get an individual's attention.

Getting Attention (Surprise):

According to the Heath brothers, "the most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern" (64). When a pattern breaks or when something simply changes, attention is required. The essential emotion that correlates with getting an individual's attention is surprise (65). How can these facts be used to make our ideas stickier? Essentially, how can we generate the unexpected? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves.

In the last post, we talked a little about the concept of schemas within the process of creating simplicity. Here, in order to cultivate unexpectedness, we must present individuals with ideas that violate their schemas. When this occurs (our schemas fail us), we are surprised. Our attention is grabbed in order that we can repair our schemas for the future (67). In other words, surprise acts as an "emergency override" when we encounter the unexpected or when our schemas fail. "Things come to a halt, ongoing activities are interrupted, our attention focuses involuntarily on the event that surprised us" (68). Therefore, unexpected ideas are more likely to stick because the element of surprise forces us to think, pay attention, and focus. Surprise makes us want to keep paying attention until we find an answer to the thing we are stumped by(69).

Despite all of the good that surprise can do, too much of it can distract us rather than grab our attention. What this tells us is that surprise isn't enough; the core message of an idea must be reinforced during this process of surprise (70).

Here is a summary of the above-mentioned points by the Heaths:

"If you want your ideas to be stickier, you've got to break someone's guessing machine and then fix it. But in surprising people, in breaking their guessing machines, how do we avoid gimmicky surprise...The easiest way to avoid gimmicky surprise and ensure that your unexpected ideas produce insight is to make sure you target an aspect of your audience's guessing machines that relates to your core message" (71).

Again, once your core message is identified, you then need to develop a way in which to communicate it to your audience. The Heath brothers suggest first finding the counter intuitive in your message and then communicating it to your audience so that it breaks their existing schemas. By doing so, you will open up the opportunity for you to reconstruct and refine their schemas using the message you are presenting, thereby the message sticks (72)!

Keeping Attention (Interest):

The element of surprise certainly gets our attention for a short period of time, but how do we attempt to keep that attention for a longer period of time? The secret ingredient here is mystery. "Mystery is created not from an unexpected moment but from an unexpected journey" (82). The implication here is that keeping attention requires having an experience whose ending is unpredictable. Curiosity/Interest then acts as the catalyst for progressively moving an individual towards this unforeseeable end, the answer, the result, or the solution. Curiosity is in it for the long haul.

When does curiosity happen? The Heaths state that "curiosity...happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge" (84). When we know that we don't know something, we are then more eager to fill that knowledge gap. Therefore, those that are successful at keeping people's attention are great at creating knowledge gaps (setting the context so that people care about these gaps). I found this interesting:

"One important implication of the gap theory is that we need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell people the facts. First, though, they must realize that they need these facts. The trick to convincing people that they need our message...is to first highlight some specific knowledge that they're missing" (85).

It is also mentioned that in order to prove knowledge is missing, individuals may need to be aware of what they do know first (92-93). Talk about a complex process!

So, how can all this be tied back to our beloved museums? First of all, it is important to note that we, as museum professionals, are in the business of breaking down barriers and building up new structures more conducive to life-long learning. Many of us perhaps feel as if this isn't right--that we should always be building upon what our visitors bring to our institutions. However, this is precisely what happens when we break down our visitors' preexisting schemas: in this specific scenario, we build by reconstructing an existing structure of knowledge rather than redesigning elements of it.

The trick is to do all of this for a purpose. How many times do we offer activities that reconstruct the way an individual looks at one specific element of the world without connecting that new knowledge to the bigger picture or what our core message is? Stickiness doesn't do you any good if you don't stick the right things to the right things. Then it is just a pain.

Another thing to keep in mind is that because we know individuals will pay attention over a longer duration of time if their curiosity is peaked we need to create environments that foster this type of response. As the Heaths implied, experiences/story lines need to be created that allow the visitor to travel done an undetermined path. They also need to expose both what the visitor already knows and what they do not so that the visitor may have a better understanding of the things they are lacking. These voids can then be filled in by us.

How this all happens is still a mystery. Perhaps it is a mystery that will provide me with the determination and curiosity to figure it out! I'm just really wondering how museums can subtly expose the knowledge gaps of their visitors while revealing to them what they do know at roughly the same time. Hum...