{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"negative_space_design__art_aesthetics","archetype_slug":"negative_space_design","domain_slug":"art_aesthetics","title":"Protected Interwork Absence for Group-Exhibition Legibility","opportunity_summary":"Test whether selectively thinning a dense group-exhibition bay and protecting gaps around focal works and clusters improves recognition, grouping, recall, attention distribution, and fatigue relative to the existing hang and a same-density recomposition. The effect, problem prevalence, ethical acceptability, and independent contributions of omission and spacing remain unverified.","adopter_authorizer":"A responsible curator at a participating gallery, acting with registrar or lender compliance, preparator and conservation approval, access review, and artist or lender authorization where contractual visibility or interpretation changes.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":3,"rationale":"Improved recognition, interpretation, recall, and viewing effort could be meaningful for visitors and participating artists, especially where access burdens are higher, but the packet provides no evidence of problem prevalence, effect size, or realized impact."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate identifies visitors, artists, lenders, curators, and operational staff as affected parties, but contains no demonstrated demand, complaints, adoption requests, or commitment from any gallery or stakeholder."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"Protected gaps plausibly reduce perceptual competition beyond the dense baseline, and the same-density recomposition rival provides a relevant comparison; however, no comparative results show an advantage, and the current composite intervention confounds thinning with spacing."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The combination of dependency review, reversible omission, protected gaps, explicit representation constraints, and comparative visitor testing is sufficiently specified to be testable, but prior art is unsearched and distinctiveness is therefore unverified."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"A photographed baseline and reversible mock-hang in one noncritical bay use ordinary exhibition-design, preparation, labeling, and visitor-research capabilities. Implementability still depends on work-specific conservation, circulation, and installation constraints."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The responsible curator and required approval roles are identifiable, and rollback is specified, but authority is distributed across registrars, lenders, artists, conservation, preparation, and access staff; an acceptable bay and all permissions are not established."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The packet supplies baseline and rival conditions, measurable outcomes, diagnosis and intervention falsifiers, exclusions, and rollback criteria. It lacks validated instruments, decision thresholds, sampling and analysis rules, accessibility strata, and any empirical observations."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"The intervention is reversible, preserves essential labels and access supports, documents the original hang, and requires restoration if access, interpretation, inclusion, safety, conservation, or contractual performance worsens. These protections reduce downside but do not eliminate exclusion or representation risks."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The review-and-mock-hang method could be repeated across exhibition bays, but acceptable spacing, adjacency, authority, access, and representation constraints are exhibition-specific, limiting standardized replication."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Design and execute a bounded, reversible comparison in one noncritical gallery or mock-gallery bay, including baseline documentation, several hang conditions, participant recruitment, accessibility review, measurement, analysis, restoration, and staff coordination.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Existing artworks, gallery or mock-gallery space, lighting, and installation equipment are available without major acquisition costs.","The study uses small visitor samples and no high-cost longitudinal follow-up.","No unusual lender, insurance, conservation, or security requirement materially increases coordination expense.","The band is a resource-equivalent estimate rather than a quoted price."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Create exhibition-selection and spacing procedures, approval and consent workflows, staff training, measurement templates, accessibility checks, and rollback documentation for use beyond the first study bay.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The institution adapts existing exhibition, registration, conservation, and access processes.","No facility renovation or major collection-management system change is required.","Artist and lender negotiations remain limited to affected exhibitions."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Apply the approach across one substantial group exhibition, including curatorial redesign, mock-hangs, artwork handling, registrar and lender coordination, conservation and access review, label changes, visitor evaluation, and contingency restoration.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch concerns one substantial exhibition rather than a building-wide redesign.","Artwork moves use existing institutional facilities and mostly existing equipment.","The exhibition does not require major construction, new storage, or extensive contractual renegotiation."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Repeat reviews, approvals, mock-hangs, installation changes, accessibility checks, visitor evaluation, and documentation across multiple group exhibitions during a year.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["A medium-scale institution applies the method to several exhibitions annually.","Recurring costs are primarily staff and partner time, participant research, and artwork handling.","No permanent additional gallery space or major capital equipment is acquired."]}},"research_burden":"MODERATE","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"The packet defines a recognizable perceptual and interpretive crowding problem through observable density, weak cluster differentiation, mistaken grouping, fragmented viewing, fatigue, and poor focal-work recognition, and supplies a baseline falsifier. Its prevalence and magnitude remain unverified."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"The responsible curator is identified as the initiating authorizer, with explicit registrar or lender, preparation, conservation, access, and sometimes artist or lender approvals."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal claims that thinning competitors and protecting gaps will improve preregistered recognition, grouping, recall, dwell distribution, and fatigue relative to both the existing dense hang and a same-density recomposition rival. Attribution between thinning and spacing requires additional conditions."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"A reversible one-bay comparison can retain essential interpretation and access supports, measure specified outcomes, and restore the photographed baseline. The packet also identifies no-improvement and worsening outcomes that would falsify the intervention."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet specifies exclusions, approvals, halt criteria, and rollback, but no actual bay, artist or lender permissions, conservation clearance, representation review, or access clearance has been secured; work-specific constraints could prevent meaningful gaps."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate bounds an initial one-bay mock-hang and identifies the principal resource drivers: curatorial and preparation labor, artwork handling, approvals, conservation and access review, participant evaluation, analysis, and restoration. Broad cost bands can therefore be stated, although confidence is low."}},"blocking_evidence":["Baseline evidence that intended focal works and relationships are actually misrecognized or burdensome in a candidate exhibition, rather than errors arising from missing context, inaccessible interpretation, or a weak thesis.","Comparative evidence against the existing hang and same-density recomposition showing a meaningful improvement without worse orientation, access, inclusion, or interpretation.","Factorial or staged evidence separating thinning alone, protected spacing alone, their combination, and arrangement effects where feasible.","Predefined instruments, accessibility strata, sampling and analysis rules, decision thresholds, and restoration criteria.","Confirmation that a candidate bay can be changed without violating artist, lender, conservation, contractual, representation, safety, circulation, or adjacency requirements.","External prior-art review establishing whether the mechanism or evaluation design is distinctive and what relevant evidence already exists."],"next_evidence_step":"With one willing gallery partner, first clear a noncritical bay through curator, registrar or lender, conservation, preparation, and access review; then run a preregistered reversible mock-gallery comparison of the photographed dense baseline, same-density recomposition, spacing-only or thinning-only conditions where feasible, and the combined protected-gap condition. Compare grouping accuracy, focal-work recognition, recall, dwell distribution, fatigue, orientation, perceived inclusion, access, and meaning-of-gap responses. Falsify advancement if the baseline shows no material legibility problem, the combined condition does not improve the primary outcomes over both principal comparisons, or any condition worsens access, inclusion, essential interpretation, safety, conservation, or authorized representation.","research_questions":["Do visitors under the existing hang actually misidentify focal works or intended groupings, forget relationships, or experience burdensome viewing effort?","Does protected spacing outperform same-density recomposition, and what incremental effect comes from spacing versus removing or rotating works?","Which outcomes and thresholds represent a decision-relevant improvement for visitors, artists, curators, and access staff?","How do effects vary across visual, cognitive, sensory, mobility, cultural, and prior-knowledge strata?","When are blank areas interpreted as intentional grouping cues rather than error, censorship, damage, unavailability, or exclusion?","Which exhibition theses or artwork relationships require density or close adjacency and therefore make the intervention inappropriate?","Can a meaningful protected-gap condition be created within actual lender, artist, conservation, access, circulation, representation, and contractual constraints?","What exhibition-density, salon-hang, museum-visitor, and perceptual-spacing prior art bears on the proposed mechanism and study design?","Do any observed benefits persist after novelty effects from the mock-hang diminish?"] ,"recommendation":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH","uncertainty_constraints":["Evidence maturity is HYPOTHESIS; no comparative visitor results are supplied.","Problem prevalence, stakeholder demand, market size, and realized impact are unmeasured.","Prior art and world novelty are unsearched and unverified.","The composite intervention changes artwork count and protected spacing together, so causal attribution is currently weak.","No candidate institution, bay, artwork set, participant population, or secured authorization is identified.","Cost bands are low-confidence resource-equivalent ranges because exhibition scale, artwork-handling requirements, permissions, and evaluation design are unspecified.","Ethical and interpretive acceptability depends on exhibition-specific representation, adjacency, historical, political, and aesthetic commitments."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"Prior art was not searched and remains unverified; consequently, novelty, distinctiveness, prevalence, comparable implementations, and existing empirical support cannot be claimed from this closed-book assessment."}