


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.

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.

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.

Selling the benefits of design thinking to your organization
This guest post is from Jack Ludden, Head of the Web Group and New Media Development at the J. Paul Getty Trust. Jack and his team help the entire Getty organization better manage, transform and present content on a multitude of digital distribution channels.

Interview with Emily Lytle-Painter of the J. Paul Getty Museum
For this post, I spoke with Emily Lytle-Painter, the education technologist at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the woman behind @MuseumofEmily on Twitter. Emily was an enthusiastic participant in a design thinking workshop at the Getty this past summer, and I wanted to check in with her to hear how things were going.

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.

“This will never work here”: six strategies for facing internal resistance to design thinking
As I work with museums on how to integrate design thinking into their ongoing processes, I find myself spending a lot of time talking with my peers about the resistance—and […]