A design thinker in residence: an interview with Henry Trejo of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Henry Trejo is the design thinker in residence at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In his role, Henry advocates for visitors and works to make the museum welcoming and inclusive.
Quick wins for building empathy with visitors: 4 hacks inspired by School Retool
Museum professionals are the "designers" of the visitor experience, and the key to developing an engaging and human-centered experience is understanding the people for whom you are designing. These quick wins, adapted from the School Retool fellowship, are things you can do next week to build deeper empathy for visitors.
Making the Workplace We Want: 4 Lessons from the Getty
What small strategies can you use to create the workplace you want? This story outlines how staff at the Getty are leveraging human-centered design practices to increase internal digital literacy and build a more joyful and human-centered culture.
5 Reasons Why Design Thinking is Good for Organizations
This guest post is from Maureen Carroll, Ph.D., the Founder of Lime Design and a lecturer in Stanford University’s d.school and Graduate School of Education. In doing hundreds of innovation workshops, she has discovered five compelling reasons why design thinking is good for organizations.
Becoming human through human-centered design: reflections from the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center
In this guest post, Rachel Griner, an independent strategy and innovation expert who served as an Executive On Loan to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, explores how human-centered design can be an expression of humanity.
What museums can learn from improv: three principles to make museums more human-centered and empathetic
In improvisational theater, there are some shared principles that the improvisers work from. These principles create a positive and supportive platform upon which the improvisers, or "players," can do their best work. What if the principles that allow improvisers to thrive and excel could be applied to museums? In this post, I consider three principles from improv theater and share my thoughts on how incorporating these principles into museum practice could make museums more human-centered and empathetic institutions.
Empathy as the starting point for innovation
One of the core principles of design thinking is its focus on human values at every stage of the process. And empathy for the people for whom you’re designing is fundamental to […]
Breaking assumptions with empathy
Over and over, one of the big lessons in design thinking seems to be don’t assume—discover directly. The insights gained from talking directly to users informs our understanding of their needs, which in turn makes all the difference between spinning one’s wheels and developing solutions that people can actually use. And prototyping and iterating along the way provide constant check-ins and mechanisms for adjustments.
How to interview visitors for empathy
This post is adapted from internal trainings I led at SFMOMA and a paper authored for the Museums and the Web conference. The power of doing empathy work with real visitors had a major impact on the internal SFMOMA team. The mere act of moving from abstracted discussions about “the public” to interactions with real, live museum visitors was incredibly powerful.