MEET Cecilia Nguyen, Senior Exhibit Developer at Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI)

 What is your background and what brought you to Portland?I grew up in California but came to Portland in 1993 to go to college. I’ve been here ever since, except for a five-year period I spent in the San Francisco Bay Area.Can you tell us a bit about what your role entails? I research and develop exhibit content and experiences. My main function is to research whatever an exhibit may be about and then build the educational content and exhibit experience based on what I know about the project’s goals and intended audience. Research for me covers a really broad range of activities, including museum visits and observations, consulting experts and advisors, spending time with community groups, going on-site visits, holding interviews, or using a library.Writing exhibit labels is the most tangible product of my work, and those can include explanatory and instructional text, always in a visual and spatial context. It’s a very challenging thing to do when you have complex and technical STEM concepts and need to communicate in very short blocks of text using plain and accessible language.I’m also deeply involved in the entire exhibit design process, and I work really closely with OMSI’s exhibit 2D and 3D designers to conceive exhibitions, their interactive environments, and exhibit components (an exhibit component is one discreet element of an entire exhibition. For example, if the produce section of a supermarket is an exhibition, then the island with all the potatoes is a component, as is the case with the prewashed salad mixes). This could mean anything from infographics and data visualization to immersive digital interactives to videos to electromechanical devices with gears, belts, motors, knobs, levers, and the like.How did you decide to pursue your career? Did you switch career paths at any point? My path was rather twisty. I majored in music in college, then spent a few years doing various jobs in retail, social services, and libraries. When I decided to commit to a profession, I chose industrial design because it combined creative expression, problem-solving, and offering value to the world in the form of useful things. At that time, I didn’t have any background in visual art or making things, so I needed to take classes to build skills and a portfolio to get myself into an industrial design program. Then I went to the Bay Area to get a second bachelor’s degree at an art school. Midway through my first year, I started to see that I had chosen a world that’s very trend-driven, and one visit to the California Academy of Sciences inspired me so much, I knew that I wanted to do museum exhibits.What are some of the most challenging parts of your job?Exhibits are a really hard medium to work in. Sitting at a desk in an office, it can be easy to think that visitors walking through a museum are focused on your exhibit and will read every single word and learn a lot of information. The truth is, though, that in museums it’s likely that a visitor will spend ten seconds at an exhibit component (especially science and technology centers like OMSI, where the exhibits tend to be highly interactive and there are a lot of interesting things everywhere). We consider 30 seconds to be a long time, so we have to distill and focus information really well and concisely because people just aren’t willing to do a lot of reading. They used to, maybe, but not these days. A lot rides on just a few words and images, and an engaging interactive experience.Surprisingly, I do a lot of different kinds of writing for vastly different audiences. Besides writing exhibit labels for the public, I also have the challenge of writing federal grant proposals. These are lengthy and veer towards very academic writing if it’s for one of the STEM-related agencies like the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. They and other federal agencies have grant programs for informal education settings.What are some of the most rewarding parts of your job?  One of the best parts of my job is to see people in an exhibit that I’ve worked on and see what they do, how they respond, what they like or don’t like, what they learn. It can take between six months and four years to develop and build an entire exhibition, so it’s always a great feeling to see it come alive with people.Another of the best parts of my job is working with advisors and intended audiences (usually youth of certain age groups and or underserved and underrepresented communities) to learn from them and get a good grounding in what will be relevant and welcoming. The exhibit team knows lots of ways to create interesting exhibits, but for guidance about what will be successful, we look to these extended team members, and it’s always very rewarding if they are satisfied by the way an exhibit turns out.Who do you work with to decide on what to include in an exhibit? I always work with a creative team that includes a designer, a fabrication lead, and a project manager. Between us, we’re the core of any team responsible for coming up with exhibits. Depending on the project’s scale, the core team may grow to include a principal investigator, project evaluators, staff who manage and maintain our traveling exhibits, and educators.I might work with organizational partners based on STEM content or audiences or both. Advisory groups may include these partners and other advisors with backgrounds in the exhibit topic, museum practices, educational research and practices, community-based organizations, equity,  and inclusion, or other relevant expertise. These partners and advisors often help shape the process, as well, which can sometimes be just as important as the final product in mission-based work.Finally, in the most ideal circumstances, there will be opportunities to observe and interact directly with intended audiences, to get input and feedback on initial ideas and prototypes. We sometimes call this co-creation, and sometimes refer to it as a version of human-centered design.What are the essential elements of a good museum exhibit? Accessibility—physical, cognitive, and cultural. It should have inclusive language and representation. Also, an exhibit should also have content that’s engaging and relevant to its intended audience. In a good exhibit, the ideas come across clearly and are supported by interactive elements that align with educational goals. For example, I wouldn’t embed problem-solving in a game of matching cards, I would give visitors information and/or materials to devise a solution and have a way to test or give feedback on the solutions.What is the impact are you making or would like to make in your field?In general, I believe in education. It leads to enrichment and empowerment. Learning happens anywhere, anytime, and exhibits are one of the most delightful ways to learn about the world. So I believe what I do for a living is valuable to contribute to a better world. I also work within OMSI as well as professional networks as an advocate and practitioner of improved DEAI in both museum experiences and behind the scenes.Do you have any advice for women pursuing a career in science and/or your field?Be true to who you are and find a social support network, whether that’s formal or informal. That may be a group of people with underrepresented social identities or some other affinity you may have. For some, that could be other women, or in my case, I seek out other people of color at my organization.What is a fun fact about you that not many people know?I don’t eat raisins because they remind me of boogers. Author Bio Kylia Ahuna is originally from Fort Collins, Colorado, and moved to Portland in the fall of 2019. She received her bachelor’s degree in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder and is currently a research assistant in a lab at Oregon Health and Sciences University. Kylia is also passionate about making research more accessible to the public and, as such, she is pursuing a graduate degree in Science Writing. She is excited to be a part of the Women in Science organization and looks forward to sharing stories of women in STEM fields through this blog series!