Designing Museum Experiences

Designing Museum Experiences is a “how-to” book for creating visitor-centered museums that emotionally and intellectually connect with museum visitors, stakeholders, and donors. Museums are changing from static, monolithic, and encyclopedic institutions to institutions that are visitor-centric, with shared authority that allows museum and visitors to become co-creators in content creation. Museum content is also changing, from static content to dynamic, evolving content that is multi-cultural and transparent regarding the evolution of facts and histories, allowing multi-person interpretations of events. Designing Museum Experiences leads readers through the methods and tools of the three stages of a museum visit (Pre-visit, In-Person Visit, and Post-visit), with a goal of motivating visitors to return and revisit the museum in the future. This museum visitation loop creates meaningful intellectual, emotional, and experiential value for the visitor. Using the business-world-proven methodologies of user centered design, Museum Visitor Experience leads the reader through the process of creating value for the visitor. Providing consistent messaging at all touchpoints (website, social media, museum staff visitor services, museum signage, etc.) creates a trusted bond between visitor and museum. The tools used to increase understanding of and encourage empathy for the museum visitor, and understand visitor motivations include: Empathy Mapping, Personas, Audience segmentation, Visitor Journey Mapping, Service Design Blueprints, System Mapping, Content Mapping, Museum Context Mapping, Stakeholder Mapping, and the Visitor Value Proposition. In the end, the reason for using the tools is to empower visitors and meet their emotional and intellectual needs, with the goal of creating a lifelong bond between museum and visitor. This is especially important as museums face a new post COVID-19 reality; only the most nimble, visitor-centered museums are likely to survive. The companion website to Designing Museum Experiences features: Links to additional visitor-centered museum information Downloadable sample documents and templates Bibliography of sources for further reading Online glossary of museum visitor experience terms Daily checklists of “how-to” provide and receive visitor-centered experiences More than 50 associated Designing Museum Experiences documents

Exhibition environments are enticingly complex spaces: as facilitators of experience; as free-choice learning contexts; as theaters of drama; as encyclopedic warehouses of cultural and natural heritage; as two-, three- and four-dimensional storytellers; as sites for self-actualizing leisure activity. But how much do we really know about the moment-by-moment transactions that comprise the intricate experiences of visitors? To strengthen the disciplinary knowledge base supporting exhibition design, we must understand more about what ‘goes on’ as people engage with the multifaceted communication environments that are contemporary exhibition spaces. The in-depth, visitor-centered research underlying this book offers nuanced understandings of the interface between visitors and exhibition environments. Analysis of visitors’ meaning-making accounts shows that the visitor experience is contingent upon four processes: framing, resonating, channeling, and broadening. These processes are distinct, yet mutually influencing. Together they offer an evidence-based conceptual framework for understanding visitors in exhibition spaces. Museum educators, designers, interpreters, curators, researchers, and evaluators will find this framework of value in both daily practice and future planning. Designing for the Museum Visitor Experience provides museum professionals and academics with a fresh vocabulary for understanding what goes on as visitors wander around exhibitions.

This state-of-the-art book explores the implications of contemporary trends that are shaping the future of museum experiences. In four separate sections, it looks into how museums are developing dialogical relationships with their audiences, reaching out beyond their local communities to involve more diverse and broader audiences. It examines current practices in involving crowds, not as passive audiences but as active users, co-designers and co-creators; it looks critically and reflectively at the design implications raised by the application of novel technologies, and by museums becoming parts of connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. Overall, the book chapters deal with aspects such as sociality, creation and sharing as ways of enhancing dialogical engagement with museum collections. They address designing experiences – including participatory exhibits, crowd sourcing and crowd mining – that are meaningful and rewarding for all categories of audiences involved. Museum Experience Design reflects on different approaches to designing with novel technologies and discusses illustrative and diverse roles of technology, both in the design process as well as in the experiences designed through those processes. The trend of museums becoming embedded in ecosystems of organisations and people is dealt with in chapters that theoretically reflect on what it means to design for ecosystems, illustrated by design cases that exemplify practical and methodological issues in doing so. Written by an interdisciplinary group of design researchers, this book is an invaluable source of inspiration for researchers, students and professionals working in this dynamic field of designing experiences for and around museums.

Looking for an A-Z, one-stop, comprehensive book on museums? Wish you were able to have one of the world’s leading museum consultants spend a couple of days with you, talking you through how to start a museum, how museums work, how to set up an exhibit, and more? If so, Museums 101 is the answer to your wishes. In one short volume, Mark Walhimer covers: • Essential Background, such as what is a museum, a quick history of museums, and 10 steps to starting a museum • Operational Basics, such as branding, marketing, strategic planning, governance, accessibility, and day-to-day operations • What goes on behind the scenes in a museum, ranging from finances to fundraising to art handling, exhibit management, and research • The Visitor Experience, planning a museum, designing exhibits for visitors, programming, and exhibit evaluation. Features that even the most experienced museum professionals will find useful include a community outreach checklist, a fundraising checklist, a questionnaire for people considering starting a new museum, and an exhaustive, well-organized list of online resources for museum operations. The book’s contents were overseen by a six-member international advisory board. Valuable appendixes you’ll use every day include a museum toolbox full of useful forms, checklists, and worksheets, and a glossary of essential museum-related terms. In addition to the printed book, Museums 101 also features a companion website exclusively for readers of the book. The website— museums101.com—features: • links to essential online resources in the museum world, • downloadable sample documents, • a glossary, • a bibliography of sources for further reading, and • photographs of more than 75 museums of all types. Museums 101 Advisory Board • Jim DeMersman, Executive Director, Museum on Main, Pleasanton, California, United States of America • David L. Godfrey, C.P.A., Allison & Godfrey, Certified Public Accountants, Norwalk, Connecticut, United States of America • Van A. Romans, President, Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth, Texas, and Board of Trustees, American Alliance of Museums, United States of America • Sergey Solovyev, Ph.D., Department of Greek & Roman Antiquities, The State Hermitage Museum, Russia • Alison Spence, Exhibitions and Loans Registrar, National Museum of Australia, Canberra ACT, Australia • Audrey Vermette, Director of Programs and Public Affairs, Canadian Museums Association, Ontario, Canada

This state-of-the-art book explores the implications of contemporary trends that are shaping the future of museum experiences. In four separate sections, it looks into how museums are developing dialogical relationships with their audiences, reaching out beyond their local communities to involve more diverse and broader audiences. It examines current practices in involving crowds, not as passive audiences but as active users, co-designers and co-creators; it looks critically and reflectively at the design implications raised by the application of novel technologies, and by museums becoming parts of connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. Overall, the book chapters deal with aspects such as sociality, creation and sharing as ways of enhancing dialogical engagement with museum collections. They address designing experiences – including participatory exhibits, crowd sourcing and crowd mining – that are meaningful and rewarding for all categories of audiences involved. Museum Experience Design reflects on different approaches to designing with novel technologies and discusses illustrative and diverse roles of technology, both in the design process as well as in the experiences designed through those processes. The trend of museums becoming embedded in ecosystems of organisations and people is dealt with in chapters that theoretically reflect on what it means to design for ecosystems, illustrated by design cases that exemplify practical and methodological issues in doing so. Written by an interdisciplinary group of design researchers, this book is an invaluable source of inspiration for researchers, students and professionals working in this dynamic field of designing experiences for and around museums.

"So you're the one getting this gift? Lucky you! Someone who knows you has visited the museum. They searched out things they thought you would care about, and they took photos and left messages for you." This is the welcoming message for the Gift app, designed to create a very personal museum visit. Hybrid Museum Experiences use new technologies to augment, expand or alter the physical experience of visiting the museum. They are designed to be experienced in close relation to the physical space and exhibit. In this book we discuss three forms of hybridity in museum experiences: incorporating the digital and the physical, creating social, yet personal and intimate experiences, and exploring ways to balance visitor participation and museum curation. The book reports on a three-year cross-disciplinary research project in which artists, design researchers and museum professionals have collaborated to create technology-mediated experiences that merge with the museum environment.

Understanding the visitor experience provides essential insights into how museums can affect people’s lives. Personal drives, group identity, decision-making and meaning-making strategies, memory, and leisure preferences, all enter into the visitor experience, which extends far beyond the walls of the institution both in time and space. Drawing upon a career in studying museum visitors, renowned researcher John Falk attempts to create a predictive model of visitor experience, one that can help museum professionals better meet those visitors’ needs. He identifies five key types of visitors who attend museums and then defines the internal processes that drive them there over and over again. Through an understanding of how museums shape and reflect their personal and group identity, Falk is able to show not only how museums can increase their attendance and revenue, but also their meaningfulness to their constituents.

Great exhibits are never an accident. Planning effective exhibits is a demanding process that requires the designer to consider many different aspects and navigate numerous pitfalls while moving a project from concept to reality. In Museum Exhibition Planning and Design, Elizabeth Bogle offers a comprehensive introduction and reference to exhibition planning and design. This book focuses on both the procedural elements of successful planning, like the phases of exhibit design and all associated tasks and issues, and on the design elements that make up the realized exhibit itself, such as color, light, shape, form, space, and building materials. This helpful guide includes: Breakdown of the design and development project phases used by professional planner/designers Principles of good design as they pertain to: color, light, shape, form, space, line, balance, accent, rhythm, proportion, and scale Criteria to evaluate an exhibit and measure its success Discussion of construction contracts and procedures Discussion of building materials and their advantages and disadvantages Glossary of museum and design terms for easy reference Bogle has translated her years of experience as an exhibition planner into a guide for practitioners of all sizes and levels of experience. For the solo practitioner, perhaps working with limited or no staff in a small institution, Bogle walks through every task that will be faced as the project develops. For the staff member of a larger institution or firm, this book serves as a checklist, reinforcing the instruction that comes from peers and previous experience. Museum Exhibition Planning and Design is a useful tool for anyone interested in or involved in bringing their exhibits to life.