Why War
Inspired by Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, the Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum set out to create an exhibit showcasing how violence has declined throughout human history. Why War brings historical context and thought-provoking data to the museum’s collection of iconic military aircraft and armor.
Beginning in 2015, I worked closely with museum leadership and subject matter experts to establish the exhibit’s narrative approach. I participated in the exhibit design team’s conceptualization sessions to define digital interactives, wall graphics, and historical artifacts.
Why War is a stark departure from the typical war exhibit—it analyzes eight American wars and assigns each a set of identifiable causes. Based on Professor Greg Cashman’s research on and descriptions of the causes, I further refined their definitions and collaborated with the exhibit design team to establish a collection of icons. These are carried throughout Why War, providing clear interpretation of historic conflicts and their origins.
The exhibit centerpiece is a massive interactive touch wall built from eight 98” displays. Each column profiles an American conflict through a variety of lenses—its causes, leaders, military technology, geography, major events, and culture of the time. To achieve the museum’s desire for a near-encyclopedic level of detail, I managed two other content developers in this experience’s research, content planning, and story writing. I reviewed, edited, and fact-checked content from partner developers and presented the material to museum leadership.
The Conflict Simulator challenges visitors to lead a nation through a hypothetical conflict. Drawing elements from the historic wars profiled elsewhere in the exhibit, I strategized and wrote four unique, branching-narrative conflict scenarios for the experience. Each scenario is comprised of four questions, each with three possible responses and a corresponding result. Each fictional war also featured a “wild card” option (prompted once every five plays) at the final question to reward repeat players. At the conclusion of the scenario, the player is assigned a leadership persona based on their decisions.
Planning and writing the Conflict Simulator scenarios was the most challenging, but by far my favorite, aspect of Why War content development.
In Chronicles of War—a separate, more personal experience—visitors can explore the lives of individuals impacted by conflict. For this interactive, I researched, wrote, and collected media assets for 60 stories about a diverse array of people. We intentionally drew from the lesser-known figures in conflict—children, women, minorities—as well as soldiers. The stories are designed and presented on scrapbook-style pages, allowing for close reading and introspection.
I completed this project as part of my employment at Belle & Wissell, Co.