Design Thinking for Museums: one year and counting
I launched this blog, Design Thinking for Museums, exactly one year ago at the 2013 Museums and the Web conference in Portland. It was an experiment that UX designer and Stanford d.school fellow Molly Wilson and I built in a day at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art cafe, armed with coffee and Wordpress. The blog was developed as a resource for the field and accompanied a paper documenting a partnership between SFMOMA and the Stanford d.school. When the site launched, I wasn't sure how long we would keep it up, if we'd get any readers, and what kind of response we'd receive from the museum community. I'm happy to report that now, one year later, there are small but significant signs of enthusiasm for and adoption of design thinking in the museum sector. I've just returned from the 2014 Museums and the Web conference, where I presented a paper with co-authors from the Getty and the Queensland Museum about how those institutions are using design thinking and prototyping to tackle challenges ranging from designing new digital publications to re-envisioning organizational structures.
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 thinking,” everyone loses. Designers get their backs up at the […]
Hacking old habits to effect organizational change
Some of the key mindsets of design thinking rely on un-learning old ways of working. To successfully integrate design thinking into your museum—whether it's for a small, one-off project or an institution-wide initiative—you must hack your old habits.
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 […]
Flip the Script: Design Thinking on the Museopunks podcast
What role does design and design thinking play in museum innovation? Museopunks, a monthly podcast in which passionate practitioners tackle prominent issues and big ideas facing museums in the modern age, digs into one of the "secret themes" that emerged out of Museums and the Web 2013 in the latest episode: design. Episode 2, Flip the Script , explores how museums can think about design, and what role empathy plays in this process. The hosts and producers of Museopunks, Suse Cairns and Jeffrey Inscho, interviewed me and Scott Gillam, Manager, Web Presence of Canadian Museum for Human Rights, for this episode.
Stepping into the “continuum of innovation”: kicking-off design thinking in your museum
I've had numerous inquiries from colleagues at institutions around the world about how to get started with design thinking at home. To step into into this "continuum of innovation," there are some strategies and approaches you can implement to kick-off the process and start infusing the design thinking ethos into your work culture. Some of these are more attitudinal, while others are tactical.
Upcoming design thinking workshops for K-12 educators
In the past few days, I learned of three design thinking workshops for K-12 educators at various museums.
Getting out there: a bias towards action
Holding back and striving for perfection is how many museums and cultural institutions approach new digital projects. Months, or years, go by before we "get out there."
Why design thinking for museums?
When I signed up for an Executive Education course offered through Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, or the "d.school," I didn't really know much about design thinking--or how it was relevant to museums. In fact, I didn't know what I was getting into.
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.