FOR INSTITUTIONS
The Headlines
Institutions have long been under pressure to adapt to meet emerging needs of the public they serve and in recent years museums increasingly report seeing their mission as being to drive or be a nexus point for important social conversations.
Designed experiences are being looked to as a tool to support this transformation in the institution’s relationship with their public, to become more permeable and to encourage visitors to engage with their content in more active ways. How designed experiences can support this, and moreover what kind of experiences best support this and why became a central concern of this project and our discussions yielded useful distinctions.
One such distinction centred on how we think about our audiences as we design and develop projects - for consumers or for citizens. Designing for citizens centres situating your audience in an active relationship to your institution, the themes being explored and each other - and providing space for them to bring something of themselves to the table. Experience design has a powerful role to play in this if we can shift to thinking about this practice as facilitating interactions as opposed to designing complete and directed experiences - which by tightly defining the decisions audiences can make channels them into a passive relationship with the experience. This is part of a wider movement occurring in the commercial sector to think of people not as consumers, but as citizens - a concept which sits squarely within the remit of our public institutions. Equity, access and the individual’s relationship with the world around them feature heavily in these conversations.
Leaving space for this requires a deep culture of collaboration and a willingness to let go of control. On the part of client, creative team and audience.
Download the full report to read the group’s insights into:
Experience design for good mental health
Spaces for everyone
Objectless museum interventions
The status of touch
Social impact
Interiority
Consumerism, citizenship and creativity
Agency and open ended possibilities
Community as an act of co-creation
When interaction doesn't happen
Collaboration and control, relationship between client, creative and audience
New ways of networking