A visitor finishes a demo and asks the host a good question. The host turns to listen. Behind them, someone steps up from the aisle, sees two people talking at the kiosk and keeps walking. From inside the booth, the exchange went well. From the aisle, the exhibit looked closed.
That moment is easy to miss on a drawing. A person shown at a touchscreen stays put while we review the plan. On a show floor, that person turns to show a colleague the result. The colleague steps back to make room. A host leans in. The activity now occupies a different part of the footprint, even though the kiosk hasn’t moved an inch.
Follow a turn all the way through
For Acxiom’s exhibit at Salesforce Connections and Snowflake Summit, NEXT/NOW designed an experience for a 20-by-20-foot footprint with future reconfiguration in mind. Visitors could take a short quiz at one of three kiosks or on a phone. Their answers produced a personal archetype that appeared on a shared LED display. An enamel pin gave each visitor something to carry away. Answering, looking up and collecting the pin each asked for a different kind of attention. See Acxiom’s exhibit.
When you review your own plan, mark where one visitor pauses at each of those changes. Then ask the host where they would stand to keep talking. They may want to point back to the screen, or spread a sample on a counter. Moving that conversation a few feet can free up a station while giving the visitor time to finish their question.
Send someone in late
Try a rehearsal for a hypothetical 10-by-20-foot booth with one open side. Tape the boundary on the floor. Use boxes for counters and give three colleagues the roles of visitor, companion and host. Ask a fourth person to come in from the aisle whenever they think there’s a place for them. Give them no instructions about where to stand.
Afterward, ask what told them it was their turn. If they were waiting for eye contact, another kiosk may do little for them. Try changing the host’s position or moving the pickup point, then run the same scene again. On the next drawing, mark the spot where the newcomer got a welcome while the first visitor still had the host’s attention. That’s a piece of floor worth keeping when the crate list gets tight.