Managing up design thinking: 5 steps for promoting human-centered design in museums
“How do I get our director/my boss/the curators/my colleagues on board with the design thinking process?” This question touches on one of the most demanding aspects of human-centered design in museums: promoting change. In this post, I share five steps for managing up design thinking in museums.
Co-creating a new museum with the community: an interview with Laura Musgrave of Coventry Transport Museum
The Coventry Transport Museum in England recently underwent a massive redevelopment effort, involving the community in an effort to better tell the stories of the people of Coventry. I spoke with Laura Musgrave from the Museum to learn more about their human-centered design process.
Embedded participatory design: 5 principles for designing with and in communities
This guest post by Maryanna Rogers explores how museums and cultural organizations are looking outside their walls and co-designing public space with their communities.
Cooking with your users: reflections on the Museum Computer Network (MCN) Keynote
The keynote speaker at the 2015 Museum Computer Network, Liz Ogpu, talked about the power of human-centered design and its potential for impact in museums.
Daring greatly through human-centered design: an interview with Hannah Fox of Derby Museums
Earlier this summer, I came across the Derby Museums Human-Centred Design Handbook, developed by the Derby Museums Trust in Derby, England. I spoke with Hannah Fox, Project Director, to learn more about the Museums' use of human-centered design methodologies.
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.
Agile user research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art: an interview with Liz Filardi and Karen Plemons
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, staff from different departments are working together to employ rapid, low-cost research methods to better understand the needs of museum visitors and inform the development and design of apps, websites, and digital games.
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.
How might we embed design thinking into a museum? 5 steps from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science
How might we embed design thinking into a museum? This is the question I've been exploring with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science over the past six months.
Activating the museum with design thinking: stories from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, one of the largest encyclopedic museums in the country, began a design thinking process in 2013 to find new ways to enhance museum visitors’ experiences.
Lean and smart human-centered design: three lessons from the Grand Rapids Art Museum
How is design thinking being implemented in smaller museums? Recently I spoke with Jon Carfagno, the Director of Learning and Audience Engagement at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, or GRAM, about how the museum is taking a human-centered approach to the development of everything from strategic planning to in-gallery experiences.
Design thinking on the run: using rapid methods at the Getty Research Institute
This guest post is from Liz McDermott, Managing Editor of Web & Communications at the Getty Research Institute (GRI). This post discusses how, with little time and limited resources, a team at the GRI used rapid methods and tools from the design thinking process to answer the question, "How can we make visitors in our galleries aware that we have a mobile tour available?"
Spreading design thinking throughout an organization: lessons from Atlassian
For this post, I interviewed Karen Cross, the Design Manager at Atlassian, about the internal design thinking program the company has been building up over the past year. Atlassian makes tools for software development, collaboration, and project management, and several museums and nonprofits use their products. Readers may be wondering why I’m featuring an interview with someone from a software company, and the answer is simple: I’ve always looked outside the museum sector for models of new ways of working, thinking, and collaborating. I believe museums can look to the private sector for new models of working, and adapt these processes to make museums smarter, more efficient, and more awesome.
5 critical success factors for organizational innovation: IDEAS
This article was adapted and reposted with permission from Eric W. Stein’s blog. Eric is an Associate Professor of Management Science and Information […]
Using design thinking to connect the physical and digital at the Rijksmuseum: an interview with Shailoh Philips
Last week I had the honor of interviewing Shailoh Philips, who worked for the last two years setting up the Media Lab at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, about a project titled Augmenting Masterpieces. The project explores connections between the physical and digital within the gallery space, and aims to build a theoretical framework for digital interfaces in a museum context from a human-centered design approach.
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.
Needfinding in the galleries: overcoming blind spots with direct observation
Museum professionals are faced with design decisions on an almost daily basis, from developing tour guidelines to building digital resources. In the routine of everyday work and with a lack of in-house visitor research staff, it is too easy to base design decisions solely on experience and precedent, and make choices based on assumptions and habit. But by conducting simple needfinding activities, such as direct visitor observations in the galleries, we can override our blind spots and arrive at new insights.
Design thinking at MuseumNext 2014: my five big takeaways
I recently returned from the MuseumNext conference in Newcastle, England, where I gave a talk, "From Insights to Prototypes: How Museums can Use the Design Thinking Process to Engage and Delight Visitors" and co-led a workshop titled "Designing for Happiness: Using Design Thinking to Delight Visitors." In this post, I share the five big takeaways I presented at the conference on how to integrate design thinking mindsets into museum practice.
Discovering design in every nook and cranny: the V&A Museum Residency Programme
This guest post is from doctoral candidate, Saskia Coulson, and describes her journey of using design research to explore residency programs in museums. She explains how museum residency programs can be used as a lens to think about the traditional and emerging frameworks of design. This is then explored through a recent example of research she conducted on the V&A Museum Residency Programme in London.
Using improv games for brainstorming and embracing failure: part 2 of 3
This is the second of three posts in which I’ll share some of my favorite improv games to use with teams […]
Using improv games to warm up for user testing and prototyping: part 3 of 3
This is the third of three posts in which I share some of my favorite improv games to use with teams who are learning and using the design thinking process. The first post covered improv games to kick-off a meeting or workshop, the second covered improv games for warming up for brainstorming and embracing failure, and this post considers improv games for warming up for user testing and prototyping.
Why play is essential to the design thinking process
Play is essential for innovation, creativity, and collaboration, and the most successful design thinkers are the ones who embrace the notion of play. In this post, I share five reasons play is critical to design thinking.
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.
Why bad ideas lead to good ideas: using “reverse thinking” in a design sprint at the National Gallery of Art
Imagining the worst way to solve a problem can actually help you solve the problem. Learn how we used a bad ideas brainstorm In a four-day design sprint at the National Gallery of Art to arrive at good solutions.
Design Thinking for Museums is 10 years old! What should we do next?
I launched this blog in 2013, when I presented a paper about bringing design thinking to SFMOMA at the annual Museums and the Web conference. I regularly wrote stories, interviewed museum practitioners, and kept the site updated until the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Now, on its 10-year-anniversary, I'm not sure what to do with this site. What do you think?
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. […]
Why play is essential to the design thinking process
Play is essential for innovation, creativity, and collaboration, and the most successful design thinkers are the ones who embrace the notion of play. In this post, I share five reasons play is critical to design thinking.
Design thinking at MuseumNext 2014: my five big takeaways
I recently returned from the MuseumNext conference in Newcastle, England, where I gave a talk, "From Insights to Prototypes: How Museums can Use the Design Thinking Process to Engage and Delight Visitors" and co-led a workshop titled "Designing for Happiness: Using Design Thinking to Delight Visitors." In this post, I share the five big takeaways I presented at the conference on how to integrate design thinking mindsets into museum practice.
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.
Why bad ideas lead to good ideas: using “reverse thinking” in a design sprint at the National Gallery of Art
Imagining the worst way to solve a problem can actually help you solve the problem. Learn how we used a bad ideas brainstorm In a four-day design sprint at the National Gallery of Art to arrive at good solutions.
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.
Using improv games to foster creativity and collaboration: part 1 of 3
I’ve been taking improvisational theater classes for years, mostly because I find them energizing and extremely fun, but also because […]
Needfinding in the galleries: overcoming blind spots with direct observation
Museum professionals are faced with design decisions on an almost daily basis, from developing tour guidelines to building digital resources. In the routine of everyday work and with a lack of in-house visitor research staff, it is too easy to base design decisions solely on experience and precedent, and make choices based on assumptions and habit. But by conducting simple needfinding activities, such as direct visitor observations in the galleries, we can override our blind spots and arrive at new insights.
Design ≠ design thinking
This guest post is from Molly Clare Wilson, an experience designer and teacher in San Francisco. When we confuse “design” and “design […]