The Design Library - Master Thesis Sophie Boonen

the Design Library master thesis

by Sophie Boonen

June 2016

The Design Library Motivating visitors to engage with the Design Museum Master Thesis Design for Interaction Delft University of Technology Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering September 2015 – June 2016 Sophie Boonen saboonen@gmail.com student number 4041399 A project in cooperation with TU Delft, Fabrique and the Design Museum.

Supervisory Team Prof. Dr. Elisa Giaccardi – Project Chair Prof. Dr. Timo de Rijk – Project Mentor Companies Fabrique - Wouter Middendorf The Design Museum - Josephine Chanter

the Design Library

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Photograph by T. Green (Open House Weekend September 2011)

Acknowledgements This graduation project wouldn’t have been possible without the support of so many people in so many ways. Meeting new people was one of the greatest things about this project.

Thanks to Martijn van der Heijden for always taking the time to talk. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experiences and for pushing me to go out of my comfort zone.

First of all, I would like to thank my company mentor Wouter Middendorf for his advice on the project. I admire his dynamism, his ability to give suggestions on small and big things and his endless source of energy.

His inspiration and enthusiasm really enabled me to complete my thesis.

I also would like to thank Ilse, Hanna and Jinhee from Fabrique for showing interest in me and my project and for enabling me to let go of my doubts. Thanks to all the other colleagues at Fabrique for their help and their humour. Working there was a great experience, meeting so many different crazy and creative people.

I am very grateful to have two inspiring professors in my supervisory team. Thanks to Elisa Giaccardi, for her eye for detail, giving suggestions for further reading and mostly for her creative view on the future of design and museums. Thanks to Timo de Rijk, for asking me serious questions and making me aware of the importance of making choices. Thank you both for putting your effort in making sense of my sometimes chaotic thoughts and for helping me getting back on track.

Thanks to my bro Tal Amram, for motivating me but also for helping me to put tiny things in perspective.

Thank you for working late with me, enjoying microwave dinners and Kapsalons, sharing ‘hitjes’, laughing with me and becoming a true friend.

Big thanks to all the staff members of the Design Museum for their kind help and co-operation throughout the project. Thanks to Josephine Chanter for inviting me into the world of the Design Museum and giving me the chance to do this amazing project.

Special thanks to the Visitor Experience staff for their true kindness and making me feel at home in the museum.

To my roommates and Kees, Amandine, Lisa, Lodovico and all the friends who in one way or another shared their support, in good and bad times, thank you. Being surrounded with my graduation buddies at IO definitely made the struggle less hard.

Thanks to Willemijn, Inge, Lydia and Thijs for taking the time to read parts of my report (- which definitely made it better!).

At last a special thanks to my parents, for always staying positive despites having to deal with my grumpy mood at times. Thank you for support and your unconditional belief in me, not only during my graduation but also throughout my entire studies.

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Photograph by L. Marchesini, October 16 (2015)

Executive Summary Preserving and protecting art for the enjoyment of future generations is part of a museum’s mission. But what if the objects on display are not that costly or rare, were in fact mass produced once? This may sound unlikely, though it is exactly the case in a museum devoted to contemporary design: The Design Museum in London. This is a museum with the peculiar nature of displaying ‘almost unique design objects’, things that could be found everywhere around us.

The Design Museum covers a wide range of disciplines.

Their vision is to make everyone understand the value of design. But how can you motivate people who have little background knowledge to engage with the topic of design and The Design Museum?

This master thesis provides an interesting and unconventional view on the notions of ownership of museum objects and design expertise. It describes a project for The Design Museum London that facilitates a change in the relation between people and design objects of (almost) everyday use by amateur selfdocumentation of practices related to borrowed museum objects.

Current visitors of The Design Museum can be roughly divided into two types of people: experts (professionals) and novices (amateurs). They differ in the way that experts have a background or specific interest in design, which novices do not have. Over the past few years, the museum’s staff has experienced that novice visitors tend to have a barrier to (re)visit The Design Museum. Studying visitor behaviour through observations, interviews and participatory research revealed that the lack of engagement is strongly related to the attitude with which visitors enter the museum.

Novice visitors have relatively low expectations about their visit, assuming design is “just not for them”.

People often relate the word “design” to “creative” or even “artistic”. Moreover, a part of the audience feels that being creative is a fixed trait — either you are born with creative genes, or you are not. This myth, these misconceptions, cause a lack of confidence.

Such visitors do not have a strong believe that they are able to create change in the world around them.

Without that self-confidence and belief in their creative capacity, they will have a lower motivation to put effort in understanding exhibitions.

Based on the results of the research, this master thesis argues that in order to engage novice visitors with The Design Museum, they should tackle the perceived exclusiveness of design, broaden the amateur’s view on what design can be and create a lasting experience outside of the traditional museum visit. This alternative approach results in the proposal for a design intervention in the form of a ‘Design Library’. This service consists of lending out a part of the design collection to visitors and facilitating selfdocumentation of user experience through a mobile application. Moments, thoughts and emotions are captured through film, pictures and text, using the application. These memory practices are used to reflect on visitors’ personal opinions and values around the topic of design.

The Design Library takes design of its pedestal and lets people take iconic design objects home, outside of the museum’s walls and into their own lives. This provides them with a pair of glasses to look at the object in a critical manner. In the long term, amateurs become an expert in judging the value of design, feeling more secure and confident of their ability to say something valuable about design related topics. Eventually, this can generate new insights and knowledge on how people use and value objects, to the benefit of users, designers, academics and The Design Museum.

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Table of Contents

INITIATION

EXPLORATION

INVESTIGATION

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5

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Introduction Why I wrote this master thesis and why you should read it.

The particularity of being a design museum Come and see these ‘almost unique’ objects!

Attraction Standing out from the crowd of 200 museums.

p. 14

p. 30

p. 44

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6

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People behind the project

‘Good’ design is ___.

Preparation

A collaboration between TU Delft, Fabrique and The Design Museum.

Beautiful? Useful? Original?

New? Nostalgic?

Give visitors the right pair of glasses.

p. 15

p. 34

p. 46

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7

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A new home

Questioning expertise

Participation

The Design Museum in London moving from Shad Thames to Kensington.

The influence of the visitor’s background.

Can you involve all visitors in the life of the museum?

p. 16

p. 38

p. 50

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Expand the reach

Engagement

How can we motivate people who are new to design to engage with a design museum?

Establishing a long term relationship with visitors.

p. 22

p. 53

FORMULATION

IDEATION

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15

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Managing expectations

Design is everywhere

Do try this at home

Shape the vague, unrealistic beliefs people might have before they visit.

The Design Museum can also have an impact outside their own building.

Understanding design through experiment

p. 60

p. 78

p. 86

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16

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Design is not for us

What if...

Critical choices

Changing the visitors’ mindset by design.

...we design a disruptive museum experience?

From ideas to final concept.

p. 67

p. 80

p. 88

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Andrew & Olovia

Imaginary design futures

A Kensington-based couple (representing the ‘novice visitor’)

For triggering thoughts and eliciting a response.

p. 72

p. 84

SOLUTION

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EVALUATION

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Towards a design ecology

Can(‘t) touch this

The effect

Breaking the walls of the Design Museum.

Blurred lines between museum and shop.

Framing the visitors’ mindset but don’t be too suggestive.

p. 92

p. 109

p. 116

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The Design Library

‘Design in the Wild’ Gallery

People’s response

Bringing design to the people.

Things in their natural habitat.

So, when do I hear more about this Designotheek?

p. 96

p. 110

p. 118

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25

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In the spotlight

‘Good’ design is ___.

The future

User generated stories around iconic design objects.

What is needed to get all of this to work?

The biggest crowd-sourced museum in the world!

p. 101

p. 112

p. 120

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Let’s look back Peaks and valleys of a journey called graduation. p. 132

Intro Preserving and protecting art for the enjoyment of future generations is part of a museum’s mission.

But what if the objects on display are not that costly or rare, were in fact mass produced once?

This may sound unlikely, though it is exactly the case in a museum devoted to contemporary design: The Design Museum in London. This is a museum with the peculiar nature of displaying ‘almost unique design objects’, things that could be found everywhere around us.

This master thesis is explores the purpose of the Design Museum in London in the near and further future. What is the image that the museum wants to express to their current and future visitors and the story they need to share? What are the needs and expectations of its visitors? These questions, among others, are asked in the first phase of this report, introducing the graduation assignment.

Furthermore the background, scope and people involved in this project are presented.

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Background Why I wrote this master thesis and why you should read it.

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Since I started a study in the design field some years ago, many people have asked me what ‘design’ really means. It has frustrated me that the image people have of design is often limited to visual product design, fashion or modern architecture. Many people do not realise that designers can contribute much more than “just making pretty things”.

Creative thinking can be used as a way of solving problems in almost any kind of field. The world we live in is complex, we have to deal with issues such as the global economic crisis, climate change, poverty and crime.

The idea for this museum started with Sir Terence Conran and Stephen Bayley, all the way back in 1982 when they established the Boilerhouse exhibition space in the basement of the Victoria & Albert museum.

Seven years later, the exhibition outgrew its location and The Design Museum opened in a converted banana warehouse in London’s Shad Thames. Since the opening in 1989, the museum has welcomed five million visitors and staged over a hundred exhibitions.

Now, in 2016, it is time for the museum to move back to West London. A great opportunity to rethink the purpose of a 21st-century design museum.

Design can react to and have an impact on the way we live our everyday lives, attempting to make this world a better place to live.

This graduation project challenges the notions of expertise and notions of ownership of the museum object. Research in The Design Museum’s current building as well as in contemporary design exhibitions in The Netherlands focused on studying people without a design background. What stimulates those people in specific to engage with design? The research provides an unconventional outlook on the notion of amateur practice.

The proposed design intervention presented in chapter 20-25 can generate insights on how different people use and value design objects to the benefit of visitors, museum staff and design academia.

Making people aware of the impact of design is part of our duty as designers. Showcasing design in museum exhibitions is a way to make people pause for a second, to let them stop and think about what is happening around them right now and what has happened in the past. To reflect, but also to look ahead; trying to look for ways to do better.

But in a time in which we are saturated with screens and have online access to almost everything we need, why would you still visit a museum? Do physical objects still have value? What if the objects on display are not that rare, and were even mass-produced? This is exactly the case of London’s only museum devoted to contemporary design in every form: The Design Museum.

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People behind the project A collaboration between TU Delft, Fabrique and The Design Museum.

This graduation project is part of the ‘Design for Interaction’ master track at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft. The project is chaired by Elisa Giaccardi and mentored by Timo de Rijk.

The project was done internally at Fabrique, a creative design agency with offices in Delft, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. From Fabrique, two people are mainly involved in this project. Wouter Middendorf, the lead interaction designer at Fabrique Delft, is the external supervisor of this graduation project. With his background in Design for Interaction, he is able to advise on the process as well as the content of this graduation project. He also worked on the interaction design of The Design Museum website.

Fabrique’s collaboration with The Design Museum started with Martijn van der Heijden, strategist at Fabrique Delft. He has been thinking along with the museum about their future move for several years already and is responsible for the strategy behind their website. Martijn also studied at the faculty of Industrial

Design Engineering in Delft and has experienced a wide range of projects for the cultural (museum) sector. With regard to this graduation project, he serves the role of advisor and sparring partner.

The opportunity to work with The Design Museum was provided by Josephine Chanter, Head of Communications and External Affairs at the museum.

She is responsible for marketing, digital and press, and has been working at the museum for about eight years.

She and Martijn often discussed strategic topics and developed a brand proposition for the future of the museum.

The Design Museum has divided their staff into different departments such as Visitor Experience, Digital Experience, Retail and Curation. People from all of the different departments are involved during the different stages, but Josephine remains the main contact person representative for the museum regarding this graduation project.

JOSEPHINE CHANTER

SOPHIE BOONEN

WOUTER MIDDENDORF

MARTIJN VAN DER HEIJDEN

Figure 1: Main involved people coming from three organisations.

ELISA GIACCARDI

TIMO DE RIJK

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A new home The Design Museum in London moving from Shad Thames to Kensington.

Next to the River Thames in London, near Tower Bridge, is where The Design Museum is currently located (Design Museum, 2015). The 1950s building has two floors with permanent and temporary exhibitions on fashion, architecture, graphic, product and service design. Alongside its programme of exhibitions, the museum also hosts talks and family activities and has a Museum Shop and cafe. From 2006 onwards, the museum is directed by Deyan Sudjic.

Since a few years, The Design Museum has been planning to move to a larger building. This is necessary for the museum to grow and expand its activities.

In 2008, it was decided that they will relocate to the former Commonwealth Institute in Kensington. This allows them to employ an area which is about three times their current size. It also brings the museum closer to other museums and the cultural heart of London: Kensington.

18 Figure 2: The current and new location of The Design Museum with a distance of 45 minutes by public transport.

Commonwealth Institute - ‘A tent in the park’ The Commonwealth Institute’s building is located in Kensington’s cultural quarter, featuring the Royal College of Art and the South Kensington museum area with among others Victoria & Albert Museum, Science Museum and Natural History Museum among others.

The ambition was to create a building for the Commonwealth Institute at a site in Holland Park. So in the 1960s, it was designed by Johnson-Marshall and partners. The architect’s intention of creating a tent is reflected in the shape of the roof; this is the most striking feature of the building (Dipper 2011). With its swooping lines, the hyperbolic paraboloid roof is also a statement of optimism and forward-looking progress.

A visit to the Commonwealth Institute allowed the public to travel the world in a single afternoon.

However, the displays had their origins in colonialism, perceiving non-Western countries as primitive, exotic and dependent on the West. The exhibition galleries lost popularity again. Struggling to find funding or alternative sources of income, the Commonwealth Institute eventually closed its doors in 2004. Since then, the building has stood vacant (Wilson 2015).

Figure 3: Photographs of ‘The Parabola’, previously known as The Commonwealth Institute (Source: Phaidon).

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The building is transformed by a design team led by architect John Pawson, who makes the building fit for a museum. To create more exhibition space, the team added a new basement. Maintaining the iconic architecture of the original design was of great importance for the museum. The upper floors of the museum are arranged around a central atrium, allowing visitors to admire the roof. When entering the building, your eyes will be naturally drawn up towards the roof structure.

The planned layout of the new museum is shown in this illustration (figure 4). The permanent gallery will have no entrance fee and will host an exhibition about the introduction to design, called ‘Designer, Maker, User’.

PERMANENT GALLERY

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SACKLER LIBRARY

TOWARDS HOLLAND PARK

GALLERY ONE

GALLERY TWO

Figure 4: A section view of the new layout of the building.

EVENT SPACE

RESTAURANT

MUSEUM OFFICES

LEARNING CENTRE

MUSEUM CAFE

ATRIUM

MUSEUM SHOP

AUDITORIUM

ENTRANCE

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TOWARDS HIGH STREET

Figure 5: An impression of the interior of the atrium of the new Design Museum (Source: New Design Museum Tumblr).

22 Figure 6: Landing page of The Design Museum’s website as captured on August 12, 2015.

New home? New site!

As The Design Museum gears up for the move to its new location, they launched a new website in 2014.

The museum’s previous website was launched in 2006 and clearly needed updating according to Chanter.

After developing a vision, staff identified several design studios whose work they had been impressed by and invited four of them to pitch for the project.

The pitch was won by Fabrique and their technical partner Q42. They created a website focused on providing practical information combined with inspirational and commercial objectives. The website supports the use of large images and video, as showed in the capture of the website’s landing page.

Fabrique and The Design Museum remain closely connected, sharing ideas about the strategy and design of the museum’s new home, digitally and physically.

This graduation project, too, is made possible by and carried out at Fabrique’s Delft based office. Since the company was founded in 1992 they have had many experiences with museum projects. They designed websites for the Rijksmuseum and Kunsthal, a multimedia tour for the Van Gogh Museum and the visual identity together with multiple interactives for the National Military Museum.

The agency employs a multidisciplinary team of interaction and visual designers, developers, strategists and art directors. Fabrique aims at creating impact by design. This can be in any form, from websites and applications to strategies and brand identities. Their clients range from consumer and retail brands to educational, governmental and cultural organisations (Fabrique, 2015).

Figure 7: Fabrique Delft office: an open space with flexible workplaces inside the ‘Dynamohal’. (Source: Origins Architecten)

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Expand the reach How can we motivate people who are new to design to engage with a design museum?

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By moving, The Design Museum will leave some of its problems behind that stem from having to deal with an old building and a lack of exhibition space. However, in order for them to become a 21st-century Design Museum, they will need more than a new roof above their heads. An initial exploration on the opinions of museum professionals shows that museums nowadays have to cope with several issues (Souhami, 2014). Extra reading material about this can be found in appendix A.

The purpose of museums is changing towards a more overarching cultural platform. Besides a house that cares for a collection, the museum is also a meeting place of social significance. Collections can be used to create an understanding of ideas that matter, to start creative conversations and spark the desire to build a better world. In this way, museums could also attract a broader target group with visitors who might not have been going to museums before.

From museum towards overarching cultural platform

A specialist program for a narrow audience group

Museums are monuments of lasting values, but also have to keep up with changing patterns of use and quickly adapt to a world that is changing faster by every day. They are expected to be audience-focused without losing control over their responsibility to curate and be the steward of their own collection. Visitors are more demanding and want to be in control of their own experiences, but also expect to be entertained and educated by the museum. They are becoming active participants instead of passive spectators.

The majority of museums have objects on display in a rather traditional way, based on a one-way model of information transmission. The objects are meant to be looked at and the information is communicated to the visitor by the museum by means of a textual, audio or video explanation. A glance at what is happening in some museums around the world shows that this interaction model is changing. Museum curators and directors argue that museums should move to a model where visitors inform each other and even inform the museum. The museum can be an important facilitator of this dialogic interaction scenario.

The first conversation with Josephine Chanter from The Design Museum reveals that reaching this broader target group is one of their challenges (Chanter 2015a).

The current reputation and programming of The Design Museum are relatively specialised, according to Chanter. Expert visitors are already known to the museum and are often involved in the design industry, being design students or professionals. For the entire interview see appendix B. “People who visit the museum are mostly either people who are particularly interested in design or interested in the specific subject of the temporary exhibition.�

Josephine Chanter

However, the size of the new museum requires The Design Museum to achieve higher visitor numbers. The museum will depend on a broader audience to reach those numbers, for which the current collections might not be diverse enough.

The majority of the new audience consists of people who have little knowledge of design, they may have a barrier to visiting the museum because they are not entirely sure what they are going to see or think it is not suitable for them. It is an audience that usually assumes you can go to any furniture store to see design artefacts.

When entering The Design Museum you encounter the atrium that holds a museum shop, cafe, admissions and cloakroom. The past has shown that the atrium can be quite a challenging space, especially for new visitors.

This is mostly because it is multi-functional but also seems to serve no main function either. It is either a too empty and cold space or a very cluttered space.

In the new building, the atrium will be part of the public, free accessible area of the museum. The atrium offers possibilities for expanding the museum’s activities. The challenge here is to make visitors feel welcome and enthusiastic to visit the paid exhibitions.

The Design Museum realised the challenges and possibilities and invited Fabrique to think along about the future positioning of the museum. Chanter & Van der Heijden developed a brand proposition (Chanter 2015b) that communicates the benefits the museum offers and what differentiates it from other museums: ‘The Design Museum as the world’s market square for design’.

In Kensington, the museum will be a place where audiences and professionals can exchange ideas and developments in the design industry. Visitors can participate in interactive and immersive exhibitions, take part in events and activities or buy a piece of design to take home with them.

It is clear that the museum sees the role of its visitors as more active, engaging with the museum on different levels. They can actively find out what design means to them, rather than working out what The Design Museum thinks design is. Fabrique and the museum identified these different levels of engagement and formed them into an engagement model (see page 2425). This model is used as inspiration throughout this project.

THE DESIGN MUSEUM’S BRAND PROPOSITION

The Design Museum as the world’s market square for design.

THE DESIGN MUSEUM’S MISSION STATEMENT

To inspire everyone to understand the value of design.

GRADUATION CHALLENGE

Create a product/service in the public area of The Design Museum, that inspires visitors who are new to design, and motivates them to engage with the museum.

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Figure 8: Multiple models of engagement to inspire understanding of design, which are interdependent (Chanter & Van der Heijden, 2015)

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So what? ?

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In terms of physical boundaries, the research is focused on the public area of the museum because of its interesting and contradicting nature. It contains a variety of spaces like the atrium, museum cafe, museum shop, ticket desk, cloakroom and even the permanent design exhibition upstairs. The atrium could be the physical form of the market square, connecting all these different spaces together.

Regarding the target audience, the museum concept should attract visitors with no or little design knowledge but neither exclude frequent visitors or people with more advanced design knowledge. The challenge is to not only attract new visitors to the museum but to also engage them: make them feel welcome, enjoy their experience and establish a longterm connection to it.

Now that the assignment and scope for this graduation project are set, it is time to dive deeper into the world of museums and find the answer to the main research question: How to motivate people who are new to design to engage with The Design Museum? The search for the answer to this question is divided into four main categories each with one or two sub-questions. The illustration gives an overview of research questions and corresponding chapters in which these are discussed.

How to motivate people who are new to design to engage with The Design Museum?

The Design Museum

Context

What is unique about The Design Museum?

CHAPTER 5

What are the needs and expectations of the new target group?

CHAPTER 7, 12, 14

What factors in the environment influence the visitor’s behaviour?

CHAPTER 8, 9, 12

29 Defining engagement + motivation

The value of design

How to motivate a novice to engage in an expert environment?

CHAPTER 6, 10, 11, 12

What kind of mindset is expected from visitors in order to reach this engagement?

CHAPTER 13

What is the role of a design object in the museum?

CHAPTER 5,6

Exploration The introduction briefly touched upon the particularity of objects displayed at The Design Museum. Most of them are a result of industrial design; objects produced for the mass. This is what makes a design museum different from an art museum: the objects are not unique. Then why are they so important that they belong in a museum?

And what is the difference between the iPhone on a pedestal in The Design Museum and the one you have in your pocket?

This chapter explores the role of objects in the museum. A glance at what is happening in other museums around the world reveals information about how museums deal with displaying ‘almost unique’ objects. What value do physical objects still have, and is this value different for different people?

Conversations with visitors in contemporary design exhibitions give a first impression on what they value in objects. What is good design according to people, or more specifically, according to museum visitors without a background in the design field?

How well can people reflect on what design means to them? Is it important for people to know the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ designed products in order for them to engage with design exhibitions? The last chapter within the exploration phase discusses the influence of the visitor’s design expertise on their engagement with objects.

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The particularity of being a design museum Come and see these ‘almost unique’ objects!

As mentioned before, The Design Museum in London displays works from different disciplines. The majority of their own collection consists of industrial designed products in categories of furniture, kitchen appliances and consumer electronics. These objects in itself are often not unique. Sometimes thousands of these were produced and could be found in any (British) household.

But there is something about putting design in a museum, which gives it status and value.

Defamiliarisation

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“After a while we just become completely familiarised and habituated to our environment, so we stop seeing things.

What the museum does, it fractures that habituated looking, so that you can look fresh and see new. It should enable visitors to look differently at design.”

Helen Charman, Head of Learning @Design Museum

The Design Museum takes everyday objects out of their context and asks people to look again, think again. So seeing objects differently, think about them more seriously and more critically helps them to have a better understanding of why these objects exist and what their impact is, rather than just their daily use.

The museum wants to fracture that relationship in some ways.

This is called the notion of defamiliarisation, a concept defined by Viktor Shklovsky in his essay ‘Art as Technique’ (Shklovsky, 1965). In here he states that: “The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar,” to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of

perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged”.

Art removes objects from the automatism of perception.

It is about seeing an object in a totally different light, it other words: to view an object and unravel its layers and uses.

The museum is responsible for asking the right questions: questions on the “why” and “how” rather than “what” something is. So why does a certain object deserve to be in a museum? Why does it even exist? How does it solve a problem? How does it shape behaviour? It should be more about what change it brings to our world than what it looks like.

But the purpose of the museum does not stop with defamiliarising objects. Linking them back to the here and now is important as well. Providing objects with contextual information is essential. So a museum can show not just the object itself, but also within its context of use; create environments rather than plinths.

To achieve that, museums definitely need objects. Some might say that in this digital age, museums need objects even more than ever. People long for authenticity which is hard to find these days. However, in his paper ‘Do history museums still need objects’, Tisdale states that museums only need objects “if they do something great with them” (Tisdale, 2011). He states that exhibitions should be not only educational but also unique, memorable, moving and provocative. Museums should provide exhibitions which are relevant and diverse enough for a broad audience, and might even need objects which are not owned by the museum itself. So, what “great” things are other museums doing with their exhibitions?

The museum as a gate to otherwise inaccessible information Museums are not just buildings with exhibitions, but overarching research institutions fostering knowledge on their collection. One of the purposes of a museum is to educate their visitors. So besides showing an object, the museum can provide the object with additional information. Information that otherwise would not be obvious to people, such as detailed information about how objects are made the way they are.

It becomes even more interesting when visitors can get additional information on demand. The Brooklyn Museum gives visitors the possibility to pose questions to their team of experts at the museum. Via an app, which is simply called ASK, visitors can message questions to curators about works of art (Browne, 2014). The images on the bottom of this page illustrate a few of the mentioned examples. When interested in elaborated descriptions and images, see appendix C. But the museum’s source of information goes further than their internal research. The museum can use its connections with artists and designers for ideas and thoughts behind products and for creating narratives.

An example of this is Talking Statues, a public intervention in several cities in the UK, including London. Writers and actors were commissioned to animate statues, using drama and humour. Once in

front of a statue, a “heritage plaque” on its plinth offered people three ways to hear its story: an HTML link, QR code or NFC chip that could be tapped with a phone to trigger a speech.

A digital narrative is added to a physical artwork in order to enhance the spectator’s experience.

Digital information layers to physical objects Nowadays, the majority of museum visitors carries its own smart device. So museums can use those for providing an extra information layer with content that can be personalised for each visitor and that changes depending on the location in the museum.

The Cleveland Museum of Art introduced ArtLens in 2013, an iPad application which can be used to scan artworks to reveal additional interpretive content.

People can select artworks to create their own museum tours and share these with other visitors via an interactive multitouch wall, called the Collection Wal. (The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013). The Collection Wall facilitates discovery and dialogue with other visitors.

A museum exhibition that feels like a rush One museum that really made visitors immerse in a holistic experience is the National Military Museum in Soest, The Netherlands. Fabrique worked together

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with the museum on a set of 29 interactive installations, providing visitors with information in a challenging manner. Serious games are used throughout the museum. Visitors can experience shooting in a tank, flying an F-16, but also learn everything about NATO language and military symbols (Fabrique, 2014).

In the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum in New York, visitors can draw and manipulate their own patterns of wallpaper in an ‘Immersion Room’. Digital and projection technologies are used to tessellate designs on the walls like original historical decorations (Cooper Hewitt, 2015).

This contemporary design museum implemented another design intervention during their new experience to engage their visitors. This one is interesting since it extends the museum visit to people’s homes, by making it easy to collect and store information.

Lasting museum experiences

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When entering the Cooper-Hewitt, visitors receive a big pen. Next to every object on display is a small pattern that looks like the origin point of the coordinate plane. When the pen touches it, the digital record of that object is added to the visitor’s personal museum collection. When the visitor leaves, information about and photos of the objects will be stored and shared via email (Cooper Hewitt, 2015).

A museum that changes perspectives What is truly desired, is more than just giving people a souvenir to show to their friends and family when they get back home. The Design Museum actually wants people to have a perspective that is slightly changed from when they entered the museum. A museum that truly changes perspectives in many ways it The New Institute in Rotterdam, which houses a temporary fashion museum for a period of about 8 months.

The New Institute is different now it explores the phenomena of ‘fashion’ and ‘museum’ in different forms.

According to its curator “fashion and the museum can both be seen as time machines”. Fashion attempts to transform the past into the future, museums attempt to solidify time.

Usually, by defamiliarising fashion in a museum, it becomes timeless in a way. This museum, however, starts with an exhibition called ‘Now’. It conveys the message that fashion changes every year, and every season a few looks are selected as ‘the’ new hot items.

The exhibition contains a few of those looks that represent actuality.

Both fashion and the museum have their own system — fashion has the shopping windows, magazines, stylists and art directors and museums have the gallery of honour, the research and the archive. What happens if you overlap these systems?

When entering the building, you are immediately immersed in a perfumery, which has become the museum’s gallery of honour. The women behind the information desk look and act like the perfumery sellers of a department store. There are perfume bottles in two scents: one for fashion and one for the museum.

Shops become museums and museums become shops.

Many art institutions become commercial in a way, by attracting sponsorships or by having merchandise stores and cafés in their public space. The New Institute, however, turns it the other way around.

Part of the museum entrance is publicly accessible, but there is vintage clothing store inside the (paid) exhibition space. It is blurring the lines between shop

and museum spaces. Pieces of clothing are allowed to be touched, selected, studied and even fitted or bought.

There is a large fitting room, called Pumporama, where visitors of all ages can try on high heeled pumps. The pumps were made especially for this project, ranging from kids size to size grandfather. Here people can come and feel what fashion is like and how high heels can transform you as a person. Here it is all about the visitor experience rather than the object (a pair of pumps) itself.

The entire museum experience at The New Institute is very user centred. Right at the entrance, visitors are exposed to a big mirror. It is a statement: fashion is about you! Fashion is not only about famous designers providing you with clothes, it is also about sharing, repairing and making. That is the message that the museum wants to convey.

People’s fashion behaviour leads to change and the fact that they buy clothes has a certain impact. But it is also about trading or sharing. Fashion is like a language everyone can speak. It is about beauty, actuality, doubt and self-image. A way to start conversations with each other.

This institute is different from earlier mentioned institutions since it is very experimental. In ‘A Speculative History of Dutch Fashion’ the story is told from the point of view of the user instead of the fashion designer. It shows signals that The Netherlands had an influence on the international fashion system. It is all speculative, however in some way it is true.

The strength of fashion designers and of designers, in general, is that they dare to speculate about the future. If the museum becomes less factual and more speculative, visitors are triggered to look at design from a new perspective.

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6

‘Good’ design is _____.

Beautiful? Useful? Original? Nostalgic?

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A museum focused on design is expected to show the best examples of design. But what are the best examples? What is good design anyway? Is it design that people value? Design that people are aware of?

Design that is appreciated by a lot of people? Design that is understood, cared for, wished to get in contact with?

There is no one value of design, the value of design is context-dependent and should be seen in relation to its users and surrounding objects. This chapter describes how design exhibitions convey the value of design and what factors they use to determine what is good design.

A small study in the Kunsthal in Rotterdam reveals how (novice) museum visitors give meaning to objects and how different people can value different objects.

At last, the concepts of co-curation, co-narration and co-creation in museum exhibitions are explained and illustrated with examples.

The value of design according to Dutch design museums Visits to contemporary design exhibitions in The Netherlands learnt how museums educate their visitors about the value of design (appendix D provides images of these visits).

The Collectie Vormgeving in Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam contains a design collection organised around themes like furniture, glass, jewellery, posters and graphic designs. They display design as iconic stand- alone products that are aesthetically appealing and had national influence (Stedelijk Museum, 2016).

The Design Derby determines what is good design by comparing design between countries and by

determining historical relevance. Placing design objects on a timeline helps to see whether designs were an improvement on the past (Boijmans van Beuningen Museum, 2015).

Another exhibition that relates design to past happenings is the exhibition ‘Red Wealth’; showing an overview of Soviet design between 1950 and 1980. Good consumer products and graphic designs from that time where designs that fit with the Soviet ideology. So the state’s influence was big and designers were highly influenced by the political climate of that time.

Cube Design Museum shows a gallery of awardwinning designs from the Red Dot Design Competition.

Furthermore, in ‘Designing the World’ works curated by six different design museums from all over the world show design for human needs. They identify human needs as food, physical and mental health, protection and security. It shows how people shape the world and how design impacts people’s lives.

The New Institute shows the impact of design. Cultural and social impact but also environmental impact. So good design is design that influences or is an example for others, design that is produced in a fair way, but also design with a low ecological footprint. Design that is not only a one-way transformation from the designers ideas to the user, but design that is a process of sharing, repairing and trading.

Museums give meaning to individual objects in an exhibition by providing overarching themes related to place, time or design discipline. They attempt to make the exhibition understandable for a wide audience, aiming to satisfy the majority of visitors.

The value of design according to museum visitors Visitors make sense of exhibitions not only based on what information the museum provides them, but also based on their own knowledge and experiences.

Each visitor comes with his own values and opinions.

In order to get an insight in what aspects visitors concern when valuing design objects, a field study in the Kunsthal is conducted. The earlier mentioned exhibition ‘Red Wealth - Soviet Design 1950-1980’ is the context of the study. The 20 interview participants came from different backgrounds and age groups.

Visitors are asked about which objects they are inspired by and which objects they would like to take home with them if they could. From their answers, three ways of talking about the value of design are revealed. The complete research can be found in appendix E.

‘Good’ design elicits personal memories Visitors look for points of familiarity, things they can relate to their own past, a frame of reference. They value objects that bring back memories. Design can evoke sentimental feelings when reminding people of their childhood.

“Especially the furniture reminds me so much of my youth, my parental home and my younger years…”

Museum visitor (female, 59)

‘Good’ design is useful (for me) People are drawn towards objects that are of specific interest to them, objects that are functional and useful for their own practices.

“I study Communication and Multimedia Design so I love graphic design. Those posters and old cameras are actually really cool.”

Museum visitor (female, 21)

‘Good’ design is different Most people like to be surprised. The majority of objects in this specific exhibition can be characterised as frugal and robust. This makes objects with a sophisticated and detailed appeal stand out from the rest, catch the visitor’s eye. Many of Soviet’s designs are based on Western products (such as the shaver on display - recognisable as a Philishave). Objects with a special and less familiar appearance are interpreted as new and original. Because of their unfamiliar characters, these few objects charm people.

“I found that set of cups beautiful because it is so much more sophisticated than the rest. I did not expect this kind of design from the Russians.”

Museum visitor (male, 63)

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Figure 9: What people answered to the question: ‘If you could take one thing home with you, what would it be?

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Visitors as experts Engagement is not a one-way transmission of knowledge from “experts” to the public. Engagement is characterised by the public’s and scientists’ mutual learning. As the exploration in the field of design and the museum has shown so far, the value of design seems to be different for each individual. Cultural institutions can get to know and (re)connect with these individual audience members by actively involving them. The museum can demonstrate that visitor’s opinions are valuable and relevant by letting them actively engage as cultural participants, not passive consumers. This active engagement comes in different levels of interaction in the form of co-curation, conarration and co-creation.

Co-curation In co-curation, visitors are involved in the curatorial process of an exhibition. The general public, online followers, members or other enthusiasts are allowed to shape the content of the museum by voting for their choices (as in “100 Toys” (The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, 2012)), they can propose projects that are important to them or even bring objects to the museum (as in “Object Stories” (Portland Art Museum, 2010)).

Co-curation can be used to create a buzz around exhibitions/projects, get public support and recognition for unknown artists or underfunded causes and encouraging social interaction and dialogue between visitors and the museum.

Co-narration Visitors become deeper involved through the activity of co-narration, where visitors are invited to create stories for the projects on display. It allows for members of the public to actively shape the look, feel and text that come with the exhibition.

Technology plays an important role in the process of co-narration.

Online databases can be used to collect and organise a variety of people’s stories around objects or happenings.

The Virtual Museum of Collective Memory collects stories related to historical events, encouraging people to tell their own stories and listen to other people’s stories (Giaccardi & Fitzcarrald, 2004).

Museums can benefit from co-narration by adding new stories to objects that have incomplete stories or that have never been fully interpreted before. In “Re-tracing the past” visitors can record their own stories and opinions regarding such objects in a ‘Room of Opinion’ (Ciolfi, Bannon, & Fernström, 2007). Here visitors can contribute to heritage.

In all of these examples, stories are eventually shared in text or audio files in an archive. But what if you could have a physical trace in the exhibition or even on the objects itself, that shows the users’ narratives? In “Tales of Things” people’s stories are associated with objects through the use of QR-codes and RFID tags. Memories become attached to possessions.

Co-creation Ultimately, visitors can contribute their own ideas or objects by co-creation of exhibitions. Visitors are gathered to produce artwork or objects that become part of the collection or exhibit. “In Your Face” is an exhibition of portraits from people of all ages and levels of ability (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2007).

In the “World Beach Project”, people were asked to upload photographs of their patterns on beaches and shorelines, which were then added to an online, searchable map of the world (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2007).

The concept of co-creation encourages self-guided exploration and allows greater depth of inquiry. The museum can achieve public input to collection records.

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7

Questioning expertise The influence of the visitor’s design background

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The graduation challenge describes visitors with little background knowledge about design, namely novice visitors. This type of visitor is usually not interested in a specific design topic but can be visiting the museum for many reasons. For example to enjoy the atmosphere, to spend time with friends and family, to entertain or educate their children, for peace and quiet time or just because they want to visit many galleries.

But what differences between novice and expert visitors are of influence on their engagement with The Design Museum? In order to identify these, it is necessary to understand the behavioural characteristics of amateurs and professionals. This section combines findings from various studies on visitor behaviour in museums and theories about design thinking to shape a clear picture of the novice visitor.

Defining ‘expertise’ Early cognitive psychology publications such as ‘Expertise in Problem Solving’ (Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1981) describe that the main determinant of expertise in a certain domain is the quality of domain-specific knowledge and skills. In museum (Palmquist & Crowley, 2007) studies, they speak about expertise as ‘a collection of knowledge, interest and activities around a specific exhibition topic’. Combining these statements results in the following definition:

An expert visitor of The Design Museum is a person who is knowledgeable, skilful or specifically interested in a particular area of design.

Design knowledge So novice visitors, in general, have a lower level of specific design knowledge. This is a combination of knowledge about the history of design, design related terminology, various design processes and awareness of existing designers and companies.

These different knowledge level are for a great part the effect of the fact that experts spend way more time to develop their knowledge in design subjects. Many of them have a background in the design field and spend working time on activities around design, whereas novice visitors have to sacrifice leisure time in order to achieve the same level of background knowledge (Meyer, 2008). The novice visitor has a relatively low interest in design. This means they choose to pursue the topic of design in their daily activities less than design experts. Furthermore, novice visitors often have less access to design learning opportunities at home, such as books, films, websites and objects (Palmquist & Crowley, 2007).

Next to background knowledge about specific design topics, there’s something which we refer to as ‘cultural capital’. With this, we mean knowledge, practice skills and a sense of ‘the rules of the game’ transferred over generations.

Interpretation of design The earlier mentioned publication (Chi et al., 1981) states that experts and novices perceive problems and situations themselves differently. Novices tend to respond to surface features of a problem while experts respond to its deep structure.

The lack of knowledge appears to prevent novices from reasoning and making assumptions necessary for interpretation of information and objects.

In 2007, two researchers from the University of Pittsburg executed an interesting research about novice and expert visitors in a natural history museum (Palmquist & Crowley, 2007). The results provide more insights on the patterns of interaction with objects. As visitors become more expert in the field, they develop deeper or more sophisticated inquiry and begin to understand objects within their context — a larger system of interaction. Novice visitors often understand museum pieces as an individual object of study, unable to imagine them in their context or associate them with developments in society.

This might result in visitors missing important bits of information and product features. Alessandro Bollo, having a background in architecture and marketing, has done several studies on visitor engagement in museums and public areas. In one of his journals (Bollo & Dal Pozzolo, 2005) he describes how the “ordinary� museum visitor behaves in an exhibition. According to him, visitors are free to explore but also free to ignore itineraries. Ordinary visitors might take in information only partially or not even take notice of it at all, which results in them not knowing why objects on display are important. Furthermore, they are not capable of making personal selections or hierarchies of objects in an exhibition. So in this case, with expertise comes intelligence, absorbing information better, knowing why designs are important and what designs are more interesting for the visitor personally.

This brings us back to the research of Palmquist & Crowley, who notice novices expect the museum to guide their interpretation and participate themselves only as a responsive learning partner. One could compare this relationship with one of a teacher (the museum) and its co-investigator (the visitor). Expert visitors, however, behave much more independent.

For them, the museum is only an interested audience member, asking questions that encourage knowledge rehearsal. In this way, they can have powerful learning conversations.

Novice visitors depend on the museum for guiding their interpretations. When the museum does not provide this guidance, the visitor has to focus a great deal of his attention on establishing ways to interpret the experience and information.

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Engagement with exhibitions

Design confidence

The lower interest in design, lack of background knowledge and trouble with interpreting information presented by the museum make it hard for novice visitors to focus on the exhibitions. This focus, together with the visitor’s time, attention span and ability to hold information are considered to be scarce resources.

The influence of the environment on these resources is relatively high for the novice visitor. This means they are easily distracted, their behaviour is highly affected by factors such as the architectural space (size, lighting and climate), museographical arrangement (layout, density of objects in the room, communication and exhibition methods) and other people (staff and visitors). This stands in contrast to expert visitors, who are much more focused on the content of the exhibition and less distracted by their environment.

Being an expert in a certain field does not only come with knowledge and experience but also with your own mindset. During one of the discussions, Josephine Chanter briefly touches upon something she referred to as ‘design confidence’. According to her:

In order to engage novice visitors in exhibitions, the choice of display areas and the way the visit is organised are extremely important. As well is the relationship of objects to other elements in the visit and the information that completes the objects in the exhibitions. The environment can be used to the benefit of making people participate and interact with the museum.

Assuming the novice visitor will often relate the word “design” to “creative” or even “artistic” they might believe that architects and designers are creative thinkers, but CEOs, lawyers and doctors are not.

Moreover, many people feel that being creative is a fixed trait — either you are born with creative genes, or you are not. In their book ‘Creative Confidence’ David & Tom Kelley describe this set of misconceptions as “the creativity myth” (Kelley & Kelley, 2013).

“People with a background in the design field are more likely to join in design debates or participate in interactive exhibitions.”

Josephine Chanter

In other words, as they become an expert in their field, they feel more secure and confident in their ability to say something valuable about design related topics.

So novice visitors of The Design Museum lack creative confidence. They don’t have a strong believe that they are able to create change in the world around them or can achieve what they set out to do.

Without this self-confidence, this believe in their creative capacity, they will have a lower motivation to put an effort in understanding exhibitions and engaging with the museum.

So what?

As visitor surveys from the past few years revealed, most visitors of The Design Museum tend not to come back after their first visit (Chanter, 2015). So the challenge we face is much more than attracting people to the museum. It is about stimulating people’s curiosity to learn more about objects, to educate and entertain them, let them take part in exhibitions and events, to commit to the museum, to share their experiences and eventually express support to the museum.

The museum experience consists of much more than the actual exhibitions. Expanding the museum’s activities means allowing the visitor to explore collections online, attending events, interaction through social media and even checking reviews on websites as Tripadvisor. The role of the museum is changing as well is the way visitors collect, interpret, engage and interact with design. The influence of the museum’s ‘authoritative voice’ will become less and the control of the visitor will become more. How does The Design Museum currently deal with this changing interaction scenario? What activities does it provide away from its building? Let’s have a look at the customer experience of a visit to The Design Museum in the next chapter.

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Challenges After using an explorative approach during the first weeks of the project, it is now time to thoroughly research the context of The Design Museum and its users. This phase is mainly focused on an extensive four-day user study conducted in London. The results are compared with findings from scientific research around museums and the novice visitor.

The methodologies used during the study are described in appendix F and appendix G shows the analysis of the results.

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Attraction Standing out from the crowd of 200 museums

When finding your way through the extensive underground network of London, you are bombarded with ads about new exhibitions, gallery openings, pop-up events, cultural festivals, and such. During the research in London, multiple visual representations of museums passed by, however, none of The Design Museum. This might explain partly why people outside the design field are often not aware of its existence.

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The Design Museum has to cope with a lack of visibility in the streets of London There are some challenges regarding being seen, not only in terms of their communication strategy but also in terms of their physical building. The current location of The Design Museum is far from ideal, being surrounded by office buildings in place not much visited by tourists and neither by locals. This is one of the reasons for moving to Kensington, where more cultural institutions are situated.

“Because they don’t know the museum’s down here.

When you come down from Tower bridge, you are sort of lost. It’s not like there’s a massive sign saying: ‘Design Museum’.”

Peter Hurrell, Building Manager

When visiting the Kensington site, however, similar issues seem to exist. The distance from Kensington’s cultural centre is significant and need to be bridged by taking the tube. From the nearest tube stations

(Kensington High Street or Earl’s Court) it is still a 10 minute walk. When you are not aware of its exact location it will be hard to find (see figure 10). The Parabola is hidden behind two newly built residential blocks on one side and by big trees in Holland Park on the back side.

These described situations are opposite of The Design Museum’s online appearance. With close to 3 million followers on Twitter, over 100k Instagram followers and an award-winning website the museum is hard to miss in terms of their online image.

Figure 10: Visibility of The Design Museum in underground stations and physical building in Kensington.

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Preparation Give visitors the right pair of glasses

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One of the ways in which visitors prepare themselves for their day at the museum is by visiting the website up front. The website is rich in photography and fluent/ smooth in use.

“A lot of people ask where the traffic signs exhibition is. When we say it’s in the tank outside and here in the hallway, they seem to be disappointed. Then they say something like ‘Big deal, hah…’”

The website sets high expectations for the visual appearance as well as the size of the physical museum.

Front of House staff (Visitor Experience)

“Yes, smaller than I expect a museum dedicated to design to be. I feel like there are just as many design objects in the gift store as there are upstairs. That is kind of disappointing.”

Visitor (male, 37)

“The building and the entrance hall look a little bit dirty.

When you’re a design museum you must know that people pay attention to those things.”

Visitor (male, 25)

Employees respond to this: “The budgets that we have here aren’t very big. One of the reasons is we’re moving, so they don’t want to spend too much money on the building. Cause in the end of the day we will be walking out, so… We don’t have enough money to replace everything we want to replace, so a lot of the time you have to repair it, keep it running, that’s one of the biggest issues.”

Peter Hurrell, Building Manager

A comment as such is not uncommon for the staff to hear from visitors. Multiple employees mention that they are approached by unsatisfied visitors, who are complaining to them about their visit and sometimes even start to swear at them.

The amount of attention dedicated to exhibitions in the museum’s digital and print media is not in line with the actual size of them. This results in misleading communication towards visitors. The ‘Road Signs’ exhibition is the smallest exhibition on display at the moment of this study, however, it is represented with the biggest leaflet at the museum’s entrance.

Design Tank as a vignette for the exhibitions Something that works well for The Design Museum to prepare visitors is the glass container outside The Design Museum. It attracts the attention of people walking on the boulevard next to the Thames. This box is used as a sneak preview — a small gallery introducing one of the museum’s temporary exhibitions. They use it as an introduction scene for The Design Museum, curated with provocative content. It is something to put people in a certain mindset, which shows what people can expect inside. This sometimes works brilliantly, sometimes less, depending on the installations (Chanter, 2015).

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Figure 11: The Design Tank as vignette for the Road Signs exhibition.

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What do you expect from an exhibition of a shoe brand?

On the first floor of the museum is a temporary exhibition on the Spanish footwear brand Camper.

The design and manufacturing process of the company are explained through sketched concepts, prototype products and as-yet-unreleased pieces.

The exhibition attempts to unveil the social, cultural and environmental impact of a life on foot, bringing insights to the pedestrian’s relationship to the built environment. The end of the exhibition shows how innovations such as wearable technologies and surveillance systems change our experience of walking (Design Museum, 2015c).

Many participants of the visitor interviews confess that Camper is an unknown brand to them and that the title of the exhibition does not offer much information about what can be expected. People miss the entire idea about certain exhibition topics and don’t see the relevance of objects in the museum. The ‘Life on Foot’ exhibition is an example of an exhibition where people already walk in without having a clue what they can expect besides “some Camper shoes”. The title doesn’t trigger people’s imagination. So when people walk in, they indeed just see a collection of shoes. They miss the entire idea behind the exhibitions and don’t see topics that can be relevant for everyone, like sustainability, experimenting with new materials, or original branding and retail solutions.

To compare, the title of Victoria and Albert exhibition ‘Shoes: Pleasure and pain’ already puts you in a mood that this is not just about the style of shoes, but about the use of them and the sensory experience.

The Design Museum can have an influence on people’s experience by providing clarity on what can be expected and by guiding the way people look at their exhibitions.

Figure 12: Students were sent through the museum with instant cameras and the task to capture their visit.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. During the user research described in appendix F, cameras were handed out to 4 out of 20 first year design students. They were asked to take pictures of something that was unexpected, something they would like to take home with them and the thing that inspired them most during their visit. Besides obtaining useful information on their opinion about design and them enjoying participating in the journey, an increase in engagement with the exhibition could be noticed: 1.

Time spent: the students spent more time walking through the exhibitions than their fellow students.

2. Appreciation of exhibition: while observing the students in the gallery they seemed to enjoy the exhibitions. In the interviews after the study, the students mention The Design Museum being the most interesting of their study trip (amongst the Science Museum and Victoria & Albert Museum).

3. The content of conversations: The students started discussing what they liked in the museum and why which made them more aware of their opinions and values in design.

By telling the students to look for something ‘unexpected’ and ‘inspiring’ they already enter the exhibition with the impression that the museum will be inspiring, new and different. It is kind of like selffulfilling prophecy. By handing over the camera, they were basically given the role of a design expert. You give them a symbolic permission to judge and critique the exhibitions and increase their confidence.

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Participation Can you involve all visitors in the life of the museum?

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The top floor of the museum houses the ‘Designs of the Year 2015’ exhibition. The exhibition celebrates design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice and captures the spirit of the year (Design Museum, 2015b). This exhibition provides visitors with an overview of what good design is according to the opinion of a jury of experts. Most visitors mention this exhibition to be the highlight of their visit.

Only some have trouble understanding the background.

For a part this has to do with the structure; objects are spread over the room but explanations are displayed on the side of the room on the walls. For some projects, the information is so far away that visitors miss out on them. The process might be crucial for understanding its originality.

“So many people don’t see the explanation of the process of colouring of the bench. It’s because the information is all the way over there and they don’t think it belongs with this design.”

Visitor Experience Staff Member

For experienced visitors the exhibition remains somewhat superficial, offering images and text about objects but not much more than what can be experienced online.

“I wouldn’t recommend my friends who are not in design to come here. They probably get bored because you need to read a lot to understand the designs. The Designs of the Year exhibition shows designs that are quite conceptual and complex.”

Visitor Experience Staff Member

Figure 13: The ‘Designs of the Year’ exhibits are placed across the gallery while textual explanations are displayed on the wall.

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Figure 14: Objects in the Camper exhibition are displayed behind glass or far from the visitor’s reach.

Please don’t touch So there is a lot of reading going on in the exhibitions.

People experience a lack of tangible interaction or multi-sensory stimulation within the exhibitions. The majority of objects in the exhibitions are not allowed to be touched. Sometimes they are even displayed so far away from visitors or inside a glass box, as the image above illustrates.

“I’m curious, I would really like to feel those materials.

But the security is standing over there so I’m not going to do that. […] I don’t know why they do not let people touch the objects. None of the stuff was really breakable…”

Visitor (male, 25

“I think it’s quite hard to have an understanding of the object by just seeing it.”

Peter Hurrell, Building Manager

Privileging the visual does not allow the viewer to replicate real life use and emotions.

Communication methods should genuinely add value to the visitor, not distract them.

This might explain why the shop is appreciated quite a lot by visitors. The public area is the most lively part of the museum. In the shop objects are allowed to be touched and there are many different kinds of objects displayed in one space.

People like to take a piece of the museum home with them, it is an extension of the museum experience.

Some of the exhibited objects are for sale in the shop, for example, pieces from the Designs of the Year exhibition. During the visitor study, the museum also has a pair of limited edition Camper shoes for sale, which were designed specifically for the museum exhibition.

Also the museum staff is proud of their shop. As Chanter states in one of our first conversations:

“The shop itself is lovely, it has lots of colour and energy and a lot of people. It is almost like all the things are selected and curated to give an exciting glance at design.

It’s also accessible and you can buy things. The shop is a real highlight of the ground floor experience.”

Josephine Chanter

Figure 15: A family exploring the book section of The Design Museum shop - books are the most sold items of the shop.

The new target group requires for new ways of exhibition methods The context of the museum can be used to first defamiliarise objects to make people look again, but then also link back to the object in context and the connection to its users. Layered information with multiple narratives could motivate the novice visitor to put an effort in understanding an exhibition. The Design Museum needs to show what problem design solves, and what its relevance to our world is. Multisensory experiences can enhance interaction with objects in the museum.

It must be mentioned that the museum is already experimenting with this. Visitors can get additional information about several exhibits from the ‘Designs of the Year 2015’ exhibition through digital interactions with Microsoft phones. In this way, visitors who wish to access extra stories about the design can use the phones to get a deeper understanding of the objects.

The artist Anish Kapoor talks about the design object and why it is important or why it belongs in the exhibition. People get an insight into the designer’s point of view.

Through using the phones visitors can also actively join the debate. They are asked questions and can then see what other visitors vote to compare their own values to those of other people.

“I didn’t expect the exhibit to be so interactive. It took it to a whole new level. I saw them when I entered the exhibition on the first floor and used them.”

Student (Female) of Photo Journey Experiment

The Microsoft phones give people something to hold in their hands, something they are allowed to touch. And since the designer explains about the design by telling a short story, they can listen to the explanation instead of reading plain text.

Inside the exhibitions of the museum, people expect to see the best examples of design. However, The Design Museum wants to show a diverse view on design, displaying projects that are new, innovative, smart and different. They attempt to also cover less known disciplines, such as service design, interaction design or design thinking. Some of the exhibited projects are intangible and abstract, which makes it hard for novice visitors to understand their meaning and value. They are not always capable of grasping the idea behind a design — and how can people engage with something they don’t understand? This makes them sometimes lose interest and find exhibitions unsatisfying.

Figure 16: ‘Tap here’ for more information in the form of a quiz presented by Anish Kapoor.

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11

Engagement Establishing a long term relationship with visitors

The extent to which visitors engage with the museum is not only dependent on how good they are able to make sense of exhibitions or how much they like the objects on display. Objects do not exist in isolation. It is about the people behind the product and the people behind The Design Museum. The attitude of visitor experience staff and shop employees is thus also of high importance and can affect the way people remember their visit.

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Humanising the museum experience can increase empathy with design and enhance people’s engagement with the museum.

The human touch The Design Museum offers a Designers in Residence programme which exists to provide practising designers, across any discipline, time and space away from their regular environment to reflect and research new ways of developing their practice. The Designers in Residence 2015 exhibition is focused on the theme of migration: movement and transition of shifting cultures or mobility. Four young designers display their work on the top floor of the building (Design Museum, 2015a).

Especially for visitors without a design background this exhibition comes across as rather conceptual. The museum invites the designers over to the museum to tell more about their project. Hefin Jones, one of the designers, came to talk about his inspiration, people he met throughout the project and the sometimes tough decisions he had to make. Visitors are given a peek into a life as a designer and are given exclusive insights from the ‘man himself’. It can make visitors value the design more and feel responsible and supportive as well.

Figure 17: Hefin Jones, one of the ‘Designers in Residence’ gives museum visitors inside information about his design project.

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Figure 18: When reading the word ‘Design Museum’ all kinds of associations may arise in the visitor’s head.

So what?

Some of the insights discovered during the visitor study are already known by The Design Museum’s staff and many of it might not be relevant anymore once moving to the new building, in a completely different part of London. So at this point, the right question to ask is which of these problems will still be a challenge in the future? Where can this graduation project have the biggest impact?

In the end, The Design Museum is still a design museum, and people have certain expectations about that. First of all, they often associate museums with heritage, history and things from the past. And when asking visitors what they expect to see when they are thinking of design, they often think of furniture, fashion or other consumer goods. So when they hear the name ‘Design Museum’ they are likely to expect to see a complete collection of the best-designed chairs from the past.

The main research question stated in the introduction was ‘How to motivate novice visitors to engage with The Design Museum?’. It is not only about what visitors can actually experience in the new museum, but also and perhaps more about what they expect to experience there. So what if The Design Museum can have an influence on those expectations, could they already put people in the right mindset? The more they enter with an open attitude, the more likely they are to engage with the museum. Based on all of the previously discussed research results, the answer to the research question is: novice visitors can be motivated to engage with The Design Museum by influencing their mindset.

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Formulation The visitors’ behaviour is for an important part determined by expectations prior to their visit.

Novice visitors do not get enough out of their visit and are often unsatisfied with the exhibitions because they have no idea what to expect. So in order to engage these visitors, The Design Museum needs to manage their expectations.

Managing expectations, however, is a broad term and can be done on different levels. This section explores mechanisms for shaping expectations, starting with identifying the kind of expectations visitors might have. Additional findings from literature research suggest a framework to evaluate and act upon expectations. This framework is applied to decide what expectations are currently not addressed and therefore require altering.

Let’s dive deeper into this mindset: what are the specific expectations the target audience has and how can the expectations shaped in such a way that they meet The Design Museum experience?

The design brief presented in chapter 13 provides more clarity on the desired mindset that matches The Design Museum’s vision on design. This phase concludes with a presentation of characteristics of the novice visitor.

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Managing Expectations Shape the vague, unrealistic beliefs people might have before they visit

With regard to the museum visit, expectations can be defined as ‘the belief that something is likely to happen’. Studies about managing expectations are often conducted in the field of marketing, on quality management and customer satisfaction. Findings within this field can form the basis for recognising the kind expectations that visitors of The Design Museum might have and what mechanisms can be used to shape those expectations.

Formation of expectations

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Expectations can come from internal beliefs as well as from many different factors in the environment. In his publication on expectation management in professional services, Ojasalo combines earlier findings from scientific research on expectations into an overview of various kinds of expectations in the service context (Ojasalo, 2001). The ones relevant for museum visits are compiled in the following illustration.

IMAGE OF DESIGN AND MUSEUMS

MARKET COMMUNICATION

FORMER EXPERIENCES

Figure 19: Summarising the origin of expectations (as adapted from Ojasalo, 2001).

WORD-OF-MOUTH

NEEDS, OPINIONS AND VALUES

MARKETING MIX OF MUSEUMS

HIGH

EXPLICIT

LOW

IMPLICIT

REALISTIC

UNREALISTIC

Figure 20: Four ways to distinguish different types of expectations (as adapted from Ojasalo, 2001).

Type of expectations There are several ways to distinguish the type of expectations. In this paragraph four of them are discussed (Ojasalo, 2001).

Realistic versus unrealistic How distant are the expectations of visitors from the actual performance level of The Design Museum? The ones close to the museum’s performance level are ‘realistic expectations’. Such as “The Design Museum will also be suitable for children”. On the contrary, an expectation like ‘“he free exhibitions will occupy us for the entire day” is impossible or highly unlikely to meet, hence unrealistic.

High versus low High expectations are above the performance level of the museum and often result in dissatisfaction about the visit. Such an expectation could be that “The Design Museum shows us all the best design examples ever made”. The risk of low expectations is that they might prevent visitors from going to the museum at all. To illustrate this: visitors might think “we are not going to get something out of this experience that lasts us after our visit”.

Implicit versus explicit When visitors do not think actively about their expectations they are implicit or unconscious. Someone might expect the museum to be like the other museums in London; that they will not have to pay for exhibitions.

In this case, the expectation becomes explicit upon the visitor’s realisation that a ticket must be purchased for the temporary exhibitions. Explicit expectations are conscious assumptions or wishes about the service in the visitor’s mind. An explicit expectation is when visitors expect that “everything in the new Design Museum will be well considered, from the toilets to the restaurant”. Visitors pay attention to this and know clearly what went wrong if those were not met.

Fully formed versus fuzzy Expectations can be fuzzy. In this case, visitors expect something, but do not have a precise picture in mind of what this thing should be (“The Design Museum is probably about fashion and furniture”). If these expectations do not materialise, visitors feel that the service was unsatisfactory, but they do not understand exactly why. It is the opposite of precise expectations that are fully defined or formed - as when they expect that “the permanent design collection will definitely have some Apple products in there”.

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Ways for a Design Museum to cope with expectations

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In the Journal of Market Focused Management, Sheth and Mittal propose a framework for managing customer expectations (Sheth & Mittal, 1996). They describe how people’s expectations can be managed in three ways: accommodate (fulfil) expectations, alter (shape) expectations or abandon the visitor segment.

Abandoning the visitor is highly unwanted since it means that the museum loses audiences and income and it can damage their image. This would only occur when both accommodation or alteration of expectation fails.

Alteration: Changing what visitors want to see The museum can use visual communication and other cues that intend to shape the visitors’ expectations.

A framework for managing expectations is shown in appendix H.

Accommodation: Give visitors what they want to see This is the fastest way to satisfy visitor needs: to fulfil their expectations. Accommodating expectations can for example be done by implementing new product or service innovations (Sheth & Mittal, 1996).

Moving to the new location and offering a free permanent exhibition as well as improved facilities are ways of providing these innovations. In this way, the museum means to meet or exceed the rising expectations of visitors. In the future, they could offer a greater variety of exhibitions and services or bring forth unthinkable/breakthrough exhibitions.

This approach is only useful up to a certain point, each of them has its costs and limitations. New products or services cannot address expectations in all domains, or may require long lead-times to actualise. Moreover, innovations that respond to one set of expectations may make new demands on customers, requiring the preparation of a new set of expectations.

Specific expectations of a novice visitor

The goal of altering expectations is to rectify an expectation associated with visitor behaviour so that the museum experience is evaluated more positively.

The theory discussed provides a framework for distinguishing expectations and inspiration for how to alter them. Now, what is needed is an overview on what expectations the specific target audience of novice visitors have and a decision on what expectations to manage.

Deciding on the right method for managing expectations can be done by evaluating expectations based on how realistic — or close to The Design Museum’s performance level — they are. The diagram in figure 21 shows when to apply what approach.

This diagram can be applied to the situation of The Design Museum. Quotes and observations from the earlier described user study in The Design Museum’s current museum are colour coded, corresponding with where the expectation comes from (the source). They are mapped along a timeline of the new museum visit, from people’s home towards the museum shop on High Street, into the museum and its exhibition spaces.

The y-axis represents the reality of expectations.

The spread on the next pages shows the expectation journey.

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Figure 21: The three situations for managing expectations and the corresponding approaches (as adapted from Sheth & Mittal, 1996).

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Figure 22: The expectation journey of a visit to The Design Museum Kensington based on findings from visitor studies in the current museum.

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Market communication Personal needs Marketing mix of museums Former experiences of the user Word-of-mouth The image of the Design Museum

Focus on shaping low expectations Fully formed expectations arise from experience or careful consideration of information (“Products in museum shops are expensive”). When a visitor has never encountered a situation before (“What would going to The Design Museum be like?”) or has not deliberately processed any information about it (“What is the real purpose of a museum shop?”) only fuzzy expectations exist.

The targeted visitors most likely have little expectations of their visit, since they new to The Design Museum and have little experience in the design field. If they do have expectations, they probably are fuzzy (or moderately formed) and implicit.

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Looking at the expectation journey, the expectations on the lower bottom of the image are most interesting to shape — since low expectations might result in not going to the museum at all. Such as: “Museum collections are not for sale”, “We’re not going to get something out of this experience that lasts us” or “They probably sell hip design gadgets in the museum shop”.

Basically, novice visitors assume that ‘design is not for them’: • Low expectations about accessibility: they perceive design as exclusive and expensive.

• Low expectations about the impact of design: think that design is just about pretty things.

• Low expectations about personal benefit: can not relate design to their personal interests or own life.

• Low expectations about the lasting effect of their visit: don’t expect to get something out of their experience that lasts after their visit.

• Low expectations about their own creativity: and are not confident enough to share an opinion about the value of design.

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Design is not for us.

Changing the visitor’s mindset by design.

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The objective of the ideation phase is to create a product or service that shapes the visitors’ expectation ‘design is not for us’ into ‘design is for us’. Changing the visitors’ mindset and motivate them to engage with The Design Museum.

Design vision: Imaginary future situation Design is everywhere around us, even in our own homes. So where does the engagement with design objects take place? Can an exhibition only be restrained to space inbetween the walls of the museum?

And if people pay a visit to The Design Museum website, even purchase a ticket before they arrive at the museum, then where does the museum visit start?

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The Design Museum should play a continuous role in people’s lives, in and outside the walls of the museum, connecting online and offline engagement. In other words; the future Design Museum should break the linearity of the museum visit regarding time and space.

Figure 23: Visualisation of a traditional visitor journey and the desired future visitor journey.

at home

online via device

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SHOP

in public transport

at work in the streets

Figure 24: Future Design Museum in relation to its surroundings.

An open mindset - to be inspired The desired mindset is one that is inspired by The Design Museum’s vision on design. That vision can be withdrawn from the curators interpretative plan for the ‘Designer, Maker, User’ exhibition (Newson, 2015), in which the different objectives and messages about the value of design are stated. Based on these, the following four pillars of the design are identified: Design is everywhere.

There is a large range and scope to the discipline of design. Everything is designed: from the architecture of our cities and the typography that defines our street signs, to the objects that we use every day. Sometimes design is even invisible.

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Design impacts our lives in many ways.

Design is about technological change, consumer choice, commercial manipulation and cultural expression. It has ongoing economic, political, social and environmental impact. Design influences us and our lives in ways we sometimes do and sometimes don’t appreciate.

Design is everywhere, from the architecture of the Design Museum’s roof to coffee that’s served in the cafe.

Design is a process.

Design is a verb: it is a process that combines creativity with a systematic approach to problem solving. It starts with a brief and ends with a solution, but in between there are many different stages in which the designers make choices about for example form, materials and production process. It is a collaborative process with people such as designers, engineers, manufacturers, strategists and the client.

Design is happening now.

Design reflects and changes the world we live in. The future of design is full of possibilities and the way things will be designed and made is changing — it is continually evolving.

Figure 25: Images illustrating the four pillars of the design.

Design is a process: prototyping to make choices about form and material.

Design impacts our live in many ways - like traffic jams are the unintended consequences of mass production.

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Design is happening now: constantly evolving technologies and advances in manufacturing such as 3D-printing.

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Andrew & Olivia A Kensington-based couple (representing the ‘novice visitor’)

As decided from the start, the target group of this project is people who don’t have much background knowledge about design but who do sometimes visit museums. The ‘novice audience’ consists of a broad range of people, including individuals, groups (families), tourists, locals, etc.

The inhabitants of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea are those who visit museums most often compared to inhabitants of other areas in London.

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They have a relatively high income and spend time on activities such as sports, going out to restaurants or (movie) theatres and visit museums and galleries. The Kensington-based couple is the target audience for this project. The following illustration gives an idea of this specific target group and their behaviour related to visiting a museum. The information included origins the document ‘Visitor Segments’, as result from an Audience Day at the museum in 2013 (Design Museum, 2013).

“I even go to Marks & Spencer to buy my cloths! Very smart woman here. I’ve always enjoyed looking at cloths. I’m interested in things, as you can tell.”

OLIVIA, 36

“I don’t have a background in design, not at all, but I like things that work.

Coming here makes me so much more interested in things.

There are always things to think more about.

Good design, good things in everyday live.”

ANDREW, 41

Olivia and her husband Andrew have been living in the Kensington & Chelsea Borough for six years now. Andrew manages a book shop and Olivia works as a researcher at Imperial College. In the weekend they often go out together.

Both of them own a smart phone and are users of widespread social media channels, mostly Twitter and Facebook. They also often use third party review websites, such as TripAdvisor and Yelp, when booking a restaurant or a day out.

The couple will visit The Design Museum in Kensington because they are looking for something new to see and to do, something to entertain them in their weekend. Visiting museums is mostly a social experience for them, however, they are also interested to learn something from the exhibitions.

An interesting opportunity for the museum is that these visitors are very likely to talk about their visit to friends and family. They will be tempted to purchase a symbol of their visit, following a positive experience.

So what?

The identification of expectations will be used to create a change targeted specifically at novice visitors.

The perceived exclusiveness of design should be lowered and the richness and relevance of it should be understood.

The focus is on creating ideas for design interventions that don’t interfere with the content of exhibitions.

Something that stays, when temporary exhibitions come and go.

The areas of focus are the public accessible spaces, possibly something that ads to the Designer, Maker, User exhibition. Preferably even having an impact outside the defined walls of the museum.

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The design phase kicks off with Audience Day. This is a workshop day organised by The Design Museum in which employees put themselves in the minds of their visitors and review the customer journey together.

The workshop includes staff members from different departments and a few external partners.

In order to use Audience Day as a way to involve more staff members closely to the project, it is needed to bring ideas to the table instead of only research results. In this way, the staff members have something to respond to and can become more enthusiastic to contribute to the project. That is why a creative session with fellow design students is organised to create many ideas in a short time period. These ideas served as a basis for several diverging stages as described in the following chapters.

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Figure 26: Creative session with fellow students to brainstorm on ideas targeted to attract and engage novice visitors.

Ideation Presenting at Audience Day helped in confirming the challenges that were identified during the research phase of the project. Furthermore it gave clarity on plans for the Design Museum in Kensington, regarding facilities, shop experience and a new branding strategy.

The ideation phase is not a linear process. The following chapters attempt to show the way from initial drawings towards two concept directions that are presented in chapter 17 and 18. The choice for one of them and reasoning behind this choice are to be found in chapter 19.

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Design is everywhere The Design Museum can also have an impact outside their own building

The design vision presented in chapter 13, discussed the opportunity to break the linearity of the museum visit and go behind the walls of the museum. The first diverging stage of the brainstorm is about design interventions everywhere but inside the museum’s exhibition space. Such places include the museum’s public area (ticket desk, cloakroom, museum restaurant & shop), public spaces outside the museum (in the street, public transport, park, library or airport), in other cultural venues (theatres, libraries, creative hubs or design events) or even in people’s homes — to reach the novice visitor.

Figure 29: Seeking for inspiration in shop experiences.

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Figure 27: Use the context to send a message from the designer to visitors, linking amateurs and experts.

Figure 28: Let visitors see design from the viewpoint of a professional (co-creation).

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Figure 30: A lab where visitors can play with objects.

Figure 31: Take objects out of the museum context - create a living room with objects.

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What if... ...we design a disruptive museum experience?

Absurd questioning can be used to move away from the obvious ideas and result in ideas that are truly new and different. What if the museum would have no walls?

What if objects in the museum could talk to each other?

What if design was not for sale? What if you connect designers with non-designers (bottom) What if the museum would not own any objects? (bottom right) What if you make a social museum experience? (top right).

Ideas that felt interesting enough to take a step further were picked out on gut feeling. A selection of 24 was ranked in two ways. First, they are colour coded according to the four pillars of the design mindset (as

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described in chapter 13). The more coloured dots, the more pillars of design are represented in the idea.

Then they are arranged according to the extent to which they have to do with changing the visitor’s expectations. This process is shown in the next pages.

Promising ideas are the ones of a use lab (1), concept space (2), people using products at home (3), visitors leaving comments behind (4). These result in the following two concept directions: Talk Tank (chapter 17) and Try & Tell (chapter 18). Some additional sketches from the process in between the ideas and these two concepts are presented in appendix I.

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Imaginary design futures For triggering thoughts and eliciting a response

Why? Could the new museum have a concept space, showing the future of design in different scenarios, like “The supermarket of the future”? The conceptual idea behind the Talk Tank is to present provocative future design scenarios to elicit a response from visitors in the form of likes and comments that they can leave behind. Such a dedicated space allows for the museum to be dynamic and relevant in new designs they introduce.

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Figure 32: The Talk Tank outside the new Design Museum showing imaginary design futures.

To trigger people’s imagination and start a debate on what could be the future of design. Visitors are enhanced to think creative, in possibilities instead of limitations. By making novice visitors talk about design with each other and with people that have a lot of background knowledge, their view gets broadened.

Active participants are more likely to care about the museum and engage with it.

How? People have a need for self-expression and creativity.

The discussion platform is a system created explicitly for this purpose. The availability of a reaction system like this turns the visitors into active participants. The value of responding lies not only in the content of the ideas expressed but also in the action of it. It is about giving everyone the chance to respond, expert or not. A way to give people a voice.

Visitors will put effort into creating and rating content without expecting something in return (the principle of a gift economy for information exchange). They are both driven by a spirit of community, as well as they are stimulated by the novelty of trying out new technologies.

What?

Before visitors enter The Design Museum they will be confronted with a concept space, the ‘Talk Tank. New design and technology solutions in the form of existing

Figure 33: Visitors are able to leave comments about the presented scenarios in a tangible way.

designs or conceptual prototypes are presented in this space. The content of the concept space can be related to exhibitions currently shown in the museum.

Comments, thoughts and likes are visualised in a physical attribute inside The Design Museum, but the platform can also be reached digitally from outside the museum.

An added value would be if users are allowed to post timed comments on specific parts of a design process, these comments can be displayed while the segment they refer to is displayed.

But of course, active participation is a relative term.

Only a small percentage of the museum’s visitors will create content, the majority will just view it. So rather than adding their own comments, you could also let visitors make their opinions known by voting on existing comments. In this way, the barrier to interact with the system is lowered. The weighting of comments according to voting behaviour has the effect of producing a kind of ‘democratically mediated’ discussion. Now a very large number of people can participate in the design discussion without it becoming so large and diffuse that it is difficult to make sense of.

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Do try this at home Understanding design through experiment

Why? The second concept direction is called Try & Tell and is about experimenting with (new) designs and technology in a lab to help people to understand how an object works. Allowing for people to try out a product of the month at home makes it even possible to see the impact over time, on their own life. Try & Tell is an idea where visitors take objects home, document their experiences and share thoughts on how they would redesign the object.

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The core of this concept is to lower the perceived exclusiveness of design. Visitors should experience design by using it, rather than looking at it. Visitors can literally take a piece of the museum home with them which makes them feel more attached and connected to the museum.

The use is documented inside the museum for other visitors to discover. People can relate better to scenarios of ‘normal’ people like themselves than to a story from the museum’s or a designer’s perspective.

This is comparable with the success of review websites like TripAdvisor. People want to see experiences of ‘people like them’ — people with families, business travellers, or couples.

How?

What?

Using an object involves more senses than just the visual (tactile!) and thus, can enrich the experience.

People can see how an object gains value over time and what the value is for their own specific — real — context.

By bringing design to the crowd and showing that the user is an expert, The Design Museum can show empathy with the big public. Instead of just giving background information about the designers, design process, materialisation and manufacturing of a product, the user’s experiences should be included in the story of design. The user generated content (videos, images & stories of use) enables The Design Museum to show multiple viewpoints on a design and create a complete image.

Visitors obtain a ‘Design Museum object’ by purchasing it in the museum shop, from a design studio or any other store. Then they take it into their own environment, being either their home or workspace or any other space outside. For a trial period, people are able to use the product in their own context. Their use is documented in different ways, by the users (taking pictures and videos, keeping a diary or blog) or the thing itself (cameras and sensors).

Experiences are collected and made tangible inside the museum. In this way, visitors can make better sense of design. People who participated in the experiment can share their thoughts on how they value the design and how they would redesign it.

Figure 35: Brief scenario of Try & Tell - visitors use an object outside the museum and tell others what they think.

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19

Critical choices From ideas to final concept

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The Talk Tank uses the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ to broaden the visitor’s perspective. There will be a supply of both amateur and professional (digital) content (user generated content of novices and experts). Visitors will be attracted to the Talk Tank before they enter the museum because of its novelty and entertainment value. This design helps to shape people’s expectations by educating them about what design is and what its impact can be before they are exposed to exhibitions.

Visitors will recognise the variety of different forms of design around them and understand the process of design better. The design world is more complex and exciting than they might have thought in the first place.

It is a publish then filter, rather than filter then publish approach, and that is its power. Information comes directly from the visitors and is not filtered by the museum first. The wide range of opinions broadens up the visitor’s perspective. People will feel better equipped as an independent-minded consumer and feel more confident in their views on design.

With Try & Tell, the museum shows empathy with the bigger public by making design more accessible.

The Design Museum lets people take a part of their collection outside the museum environment, bringing design into people’s homes. The idea of lending out a part of the design collection lowers the perceived exclusiveness of design. The Design Museum will be an institution that gives design to the crowd. The museum shows empathy with the bigger public by involving user experience in their story of design. A story of design that people are more likely to engage with.

The first change in expectations is in the beginning — when the visitor realises he can actually take objects home instead of just looking at it. On the long term, as the objects are spread across the world, the image of The Design Museum among the bigger public changes and people will know better what to expect.

So what?

Try & Tell is a concept that can diversify The Design Museum from all the other museums since it really uses the strength of the ‘almost unique’ design object, something which an art museum, for example, doesn’t have. Its collection of stories around how objects are used is beneficial for the museum as well, to share with designers or for the sake of their own research.

The service will make visitors eager to come back and it increases the reach outside the defined walls of the museum. Design Museum pieces can end up in homes of people that might have never been going to the museum before. This concept lives up to the design goal of conveying the message ‘Design is for us’.

Additional testing (appendix J and K) helped to improve the concept and work towards the final design, presented in the next phase.

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Solution Based on the results of extensive user research, it is argued that in order to engage novice visitors with the Design Museum, the museum should lower the perceived exclusiveness of design, broaden the amateur’s view on what design can be, and create a lasting experience outside of the traditional museum visit. This alternative approach results in the proposal for a design intervention in the form of The Design Library: lending out a part of the design collection to visitors, facilitating self-documentation and sharing of user experiences. Eventually, The Design Museum becomes the centre of a bigger ecology of design.

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Towards a design ecology Breaking the walls of the Design Museum

Ecology: the branch of science concerned with the relationships among organisms and between (groups of) organisms and their environments Merriam-Webster, 2016

The term ‘ecology’ is used in this chapter to describe and connect factors involved in the concept and the relations between them.

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The final concept is about delivering a product ecosystem that serves the visitor journey across physical and digital environments, using multiple devices that are already available in our world.

No designed interface or physical object exists in isolation, in fact, the real power lies in how they are used together with others. This sets the foundation of a design ecology that helps to understand elements and groups in relation to the Design Museum and exhibition context.

The concept of ecology is appropriate within this project, ‘since it underlies the notion of design-inaction and over time’ (Salgado, 2009).

It is desired to offer a consistent experience across the various parts in the ecology, conveying the same core message. However the different parts are not identical experiences but adjusted to accommodate the different devices and users, they are complementary. With a continuous approach, the experience flows from one device to the next, within different contexts, supporting users every step of the way through their visitor journey.

Figure 36: The final design explained through the concept of a design ecology. Descriptions of each part can be found on the next page.

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The Design Library The Design Museum will allow people to borrow designs from The Design Library. This is a physical place inside the museum’s building to facilitate the storage of objects as well as to offer the service of lending them out to visitors. The creation of The Design Library breaks the linearity of the museum visit — creating a lasting museum experience.

Design Library App As visitors become users of the library, they get access to The Design Library app. This application is a means of communication between The Design Museum and users. Every week users receive questions about the object, their experience with it and their perception on design. In the end, the app lets people reflect on their personal values and opinions on the topic of design.

Design at home Objects are brought outside the walls of the Design Museum into people’s homes, offices, public spaces or anywhere else. People experience design in context over time, in this way their independent interpretation of design objects is stimulated. They are allowed to keep designs for a period of one month.

The Spotlight The Spotlight is a place at the heart of the museum, in the atrium, where user generated insights around borrowed designs are displayed. The object of the month is placed on a pedestal and a digital information layer in the form of a display is added to the object.

This is the spot where novice visitors are shown that the value of design is context dependent and should be seen in relation to its users and surrounding objects.

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The Design Museum Shop The Design Museum Shop on Kensington High Street is used to make people aware of the existence of The Design Library. A small selection of objects from The Design Library is placed in the museum shop, on a pedestal, giving them status and value. It’s about defamiliarising design objects by taking them out of the retail context.

An experience library Data from different users is gathered in an online collection which we call the Experience Library.

Assuming there are multiple people actively using the application, a database with experiences around one design is built up over time. This can then generate new insights and knowledge on how different people use and value design objects, to the benefit of visitors, scientific staff (from curators to educators) and design historians.

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Design in the Wild Gallery Whilst the Spotlight focuses on one specific design object, the Design in the Wild Gallery shows an overview of various objects that have been borrowed by people so far. This gallery shows novice visitors that design is for ‘all of us’ and everywhere around us. People recognise the same object in different environments, the natural surroundings of people’s homes. This is a permanent gallery.

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The Design Library Bringing design to the people

The Design Library is situated on the second floor of the museum, inside the permanent gallery right next to the Designer, Maker, User exhibition. The organisation/infrastructure of the library is used to draw the attention of visitors by storing and displaying the objects inside a giant transparent locker wall. In one peek visitors can see what objects are available at that moment.

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Figure 37: A floor plan of the Designer, Maker, User exhibition with possible locations for the library marked in yellow.

In order to take part in the Design Library, visitors must become a member. They can choose between a permanent (year) membership or a temporary membership for one-time use only in order to lower the barrier to participate. Becoming a member can happen on the spot, where members of the visitors experience staff are walking around with iPads. By becoming a member visitors leave their personal details and sign a loan agreement. Then they can grab a design right from the transparent locker wall.

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Figure 38: An impression of what the physical library could look like in the museum.

The Design Library Collection By looking closely at the Design Museum’s collection, their shop selection, defining ‘iconic’ design and imagining how people use objects, examples for designs in the library can be determined. It is decided to start the library with iconic designs, satisfying the majority of people and thus, lowering the barrier to participate.

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What is ‘Iconic’ design?

Often, good design is the marriage between form and function to create something that is desirable and useful for our life. For the Design Museum, good design can also be promising, controversial, timeless or iconic. An iconic design is usually a design that is ‘groundbreaking’, one that sets new standards in its field. It is a design that other designers and manufacturers follow, as it becomes a benchmark for other similar products. Iconic designs are innovative in the way they are engineered and in the way they solve a design problem. So ‘groundbreaking’ in the features and functions it offers.

Iconic design is usually accepted by the masses at large, often over time. In many, ways it has to become part of the landscape but remains to look fresh and timeless. It has to stand up to the test of time, being just as relevant today as when it was first conceived. So remaining good design, despite the passing of years, decades or even centuries.

Iconic design is design that is recognisable. Examples of British designs often referred to as iconic designs are red telephone boxes, red double decker buses, the Spitfire, the Concorde, the original Mini car and the London Underground map. Other (international) iconic designs are the Sony Walkman, iPod touch or for example Harley Davidson motorbikes.

Process of selecting objects Someone needs to be named Head of The Design Library, to manage the process of selecting objects.

Qualified people within the existing staff members are Rebecca Hossain (Head of Retail), Alex Newson (Senior Curator) and Justin McGuirk (Chief Curator). Designs that are part of the library should not only convey the Design Museum’s message of the value of design but should also measure up to practical requirements: 1. Usability Objects should still be usable. This excludes for example old electronic products with outdated technology or products which stopped working.

2. Re-usability Objects that are not disposable/for one time use only.

These should be objects that are interesting to use over time and that can be reused by other users of the library as well.

3. Fragility Avoid objects that are easily breakable such as glass and ceramics.

4. Value The value of objects is to some extent dependent on the supplier of objects. It seems reasonable to not lend out objects with a value above £150.

5. Transportability Users should be able to take the objects home with public transport — so they should fit in a backpack or large shopping bag.

Examples of objects The following image gives twelve examples of products that could be found in the Design Library. This overview is inspired by objects curated for the permanent collection display and based on the selection of products sold in the Design Museum shop. Additional information about each of these objects can be found in appendix L.

Figure 39: Twelve selected objects for the Design Library (Source: Design Museum).

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Figure 40: Anglepoise type 75 Desk Lamp (Source: Anglepoise).

Lead story: Anglepoise lamp

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One object is selected in order to present the concept in further detail. The object of choice is the Anglepoise, a balanced-arm lamp designed in 1932 by British Designer George Carwardine.

The Anglepoise is iconic, British and widely recognisable by both novices and experts.

The Anglepoise brand already has close connections with the Design Museum, as the lamp was previously selected as one of six design stories illustrating the impact of contemporary design in the ‘Extraordinary Stories about Ordinary Things’ exhibition.

Groundbreaking design in terms of technology.

The lamp was created whilst developing new concepts for vehicle suspension, as Carwardine recognised the mechanism had uses for other things.

A design that improves on the past.

It was the first lamp that has a shade that allows the user to change the direction of the lamp and protecting users eyes, meaning it was user-friendly, efficient in use and also energy saving. Its design offers flexibility and stability.

A design that is innovative.

The joints and spring tension allow the lamp to be moved into a wild range of positions. The same force is required to pull the springs apart, so the lamp can be adjusted using fingertip pressure.

A design that is aesthetically pleasing.

The design has an unselfconscious and innocent shape.

It has a timeless design, a classic look.

A design that stands the test of time.

This lamp is kept unchanged for 30 years. Even though the lamp was created in the early 20th century it still plays a huge part in modern day design.

A design that is recognisable.

This design has an international appeal and a recognisable form that follows its function. The lamp is a popular example of pop culture.

A design that is popular / widely accepted.

Carwardine applied for a patent on 4th July 1932 and manufactured himself using his own Carwardine Accessories workshops. In the 21st century, the Anglepoise company has grown double. The lamp’s popularity is multiplying on a global scale in homes, shops, workplaces and restaurants.

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Design in the spotlight User generated stories around iconic design objects

Facilitating self-documentation and sharing of user experiences are done via two core devices. Moments, thoughts and emotions are captured through film, pictures and text with the mobile application. The application is connected to a device inside the Design Museum, at the Spotlight, where collected experiences are then shared with visitors.

Figure 41: Wireframe of the display for user generated stories inside the design museum (iPad).

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The Design Library app Users of the Design Library will use their own smart device to capture their experiences during the loan period. For this, the Design Museum will launch an application, running separately from the website or collection app.

People are stimulated to reflect on their experience with the object and the change in their perception of design. The Design Museum poses a new question to trigger the users’ thoughts once per week.

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Figure 42: An impression of the application in use.

Getting started When at home, the user downloads the application from the app store and unboxes the borrowed design object. The following images show the first few pages of the app (‘onboarding’ pages) that are meant to get people familiar with the features it offers. Then the user starts with creating an account by signing and linking their membership card will to their account. At last, the application asks the user to turn on GPS settings in order to know the location.

Knowing the users is a valuable asset the Design Museum can have for designing a more powerful, engaging and user-friendly experience.

So the more they can learn about their users, their needs, preferences, interests, habits and behaviour patterns the better, more personalised experience they can offer. Therefore, getting users to sign in is an important step in building knowledge around who the users are and their usage profile across devices.

Sign in is the most prevalent way to identify the people using the product. The registration and sign-in process can be a significant conversion roadblock. Giving the option to sign in via their existing social media accounts makes the process much faster (requiring fewer details and clicks). Instead of manually entering the membership code, users can scan the card using the application. This interaction can simplify user input.

Figure 43: Screens of the onboarding experience (on top) and the sign in process (on the bottom) of the application.

WELCOME TO THE DESIGN LIBRARY

SHARE EXPERIENCES

ASK QUESTIONS

The new place to borrow design and share your experience.

How’s it going? Give visitors a peak into your life with the design by weekly sharing your experiences.

Now that you’ve become the expert of your own experience, what would you like to know from other users?

GET STARTED >

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CONNECT YOUR MEMBER CARD

Logo

Camera SIGN IN WITH FACEBOOK

or create an account:

Don’t Allow

Username Email Password

or type in your code manually:

Confirm password SIGN UP

“Design Museum” Would Like to Use Your Current Location

....

OK

Main function: timeline The application is focused around a timeline. This timeline shows comments, alerts, questions and notifications during the entire loan period. Questions can involve giving an answer in text, images or videos.

In this way, the museum collects user generated content on different design related topics. Besides answering questions by the museum, users can also upload own stories or pictures at any given moment. If people are inspired and wonder about a design related question, they can upload their own question for other users.

A moderator from the Design Museum checks the uploaded questions and determines what questions will be published. Furthermore, the application gives the museum a way to communicate with users of the Design Library, sending notifications and reminders.

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The purpose of the service is explained by a member of the Design Museum in an introduction movie. In this example, Helen Charman explains why the Anglepoise lamp is selected to be made accessible through the Design Library.

Asking the right questions The Design Museum will pose new questions to users of the application every week. In the beginning, the questions will be about introducing the user and observing surface characteristics of the borrowed object.

After using the object for a week, the user will be stimulated to take a closer look at the object and its surroundings.

Then, after two weeks, when the user is half way through the loan period, he will be asked about this experiences with the object so far.

Part 4 is about releasing the user’s creativity and own interpretation.

At last, after the user has borrowed the object for one month, he will reflect on the experience and the borrowed design.

The following two pages show possible questions to ask to users of the application. The idea is that users receive a few questions selected from these.

3/7

TIMELINE MY OBJECT HELP + SUPPORT SETTINGS 28/6

Sophie Boonen

Figure 44: The application’s menu bar.

Figure 45: The application’s main screen: a timeline of the experience.

18/5

A question posted by the Design Museum.

TITLE by [Writer] THEME

[Questions about the user, the object and the experience]?

The date is shown on the timeline: the circle has a white filling or no filling depending on whether the user has answered the question.

ASK QUESTIONS 6/5

TITLE Now that you’ve become the expert by [Writer]

of yourTHEME own experience, what would you like to know from other users?

An answered question: the title of the question and an image of the result.

Picture GET STARTED >

1/5

HI THERE!

by Helen Charman INTRO

An introduction movie posted by an employee of the Design Museum.

ARCHIVE 1/4

THE VAMP

by Paul Cocksedge

1/2

BOSKKE CUBE

by Boskke

The archive of the user: results of objects he borrowed earlier.

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Part 1: Unboxing the object

Part 3: Using the object

HI THERE! Who are you? Can you write a short story about yourself?

USER

SHED SOME LIGHT How does the environment change by the light of the lamp? Take pictures of the room with the light turned on and off.

EFFECTIVENESS

THAT FIRST TIME How did you feel when opening the box and holding the object for the first time?

EMOTIONS WHAT WAS THE SPARK? I chose the Anglepoise lamp because…

DESIRABILITY

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VALUE FOR MONEY If you were to buy this lamp, how much would you pay for it?

DESIRABILITY

Part 2: Getting familiar with the object LOOK CLOSER Take a close look at the lamp. Its base, swinging arms, head. What part of the object do you like most?

PRODUCT QUALITIES DESIGN IN THE WILD Can you show the object where you placed it?

CONTEXT HOW IT’S MADE Can you find a product made of the same material in your house?

PRODUCT PROPERTIES

SHOW YOUR MOVES! In what angle did you position your Anglepoise?

FUNCTIONALITY OPEN YOUR EYES What’s yours looking at? Take a picture of what your lamp is shining light on.

USEFULLNESS EARLY BIRD OR NIGHT OWL? At what time of the day do you use the lamp?

USER SAME THING, DIFFERENT SHAPE What other lights do you have in your house? Use your camera to take lamps you can find.

FORM GIVING MATCHMAKER Find a product in your house that is a perfect match to the Anglepoise light.

PRODUCT FAMILIES

Part 4: Releasing creativity RELEASE THE DESIGNER IN YOU! How would you redesign the lamp?

CREATIVITY / DESIGN SKILLS GO GREEN Can you think of ways to make this object more eco-friendly?

SUSTAINABILITY / CREATIVITY ASK ME ANYTHING If you could ask one question to the designer of this object, what would it be?

CRITICAL THINKING

Part 5: Boxing the object / Reflecting on the experience CHARACTER Would you consider the lamp as male or female?

PRODUCT PROPERTIES FRIEND OR LOVER How would you describe your relationship with the lamp?

INTERACTION QUALITIES SURPRISE! Did something unexpected happen while using the lamp?

ENJOYMENT SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK? What did you like most about using this lamp?

USER EXPERIENCE VALUE FOR MONEY (2.0) If you were to buy this lamp, how much would you pay for it?

DESIRABILITY TIME TO SAY GOODBYE How do you feel about leaving the Anglepoise?

EMOTIONS EVERY ENDING IS THE START OF SOMETHING NEW… Next time we have a [new object] in our Design Library. Come to check it out!

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Anglepoise in the Spotlight On the one hand, users who join the library are stimulated to reflect on their personal opinions and values by thought provoking questions they receive.

On the other hand, the answers they give inspire novice visitors of the museum. They see what ‘people like them’ think of the design, instead of having an authoritative voice of the museum or the designer.

So the application is connected to a device inside The Design Museum, though the two serve different audiences. The device at the Spotlight helps novice visitor to create a broader viewpoint on design. At this spot, the object will be placed in the centre and the simple display shows one user comment at a time.

110 Figure 46: The filter is part of the display and allows visitors to brows through the user stories.

Inspire me with

ANYTHING

from ANYONE uploaded from

ANY PLACE

on

ANY TIME .

MOVIES

MALES

KENSINGTON

MORNINGS

PICTURES

FEMALES

LONDON

EVENINGS

STORIES

FAMILIES

UK

MONDAYS

DESIGNERS

EUROPE

SUNDAYS

TEENAGERS

THE FIRST DAY THE LAST WEEK

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Can(‘t) touch this Blurred lines between museum and shop

The Design Museum Shop on High Street forms a bridge between the museum world and the outside world. This is the place where new (possible) visitors come across. It is an excellent way of involving people passing by, who might not have been going to the Design Museum before. A smaller depot of the Design Library can do so. In this way, outsiders passing by are also involved to look again and wonder why these objects belong in the museum.

Here they find out about the design and designer in the language of a museum narrative and with basic, plain coloured background. Objects are displayed as if it was a museum exhibition. In this way, designs stand out from the rest of the products in the shop. Visitors will start to wonder why especially these objects deserve special attention. In order to join the service, visitors will have to enter the Design Museum.

The shop could also be used to promote the purchase of objects that are or were previously part of the Design Library. It could have signs saying: “If you enjoyed borrowing it, borrow it forever”.

Figure 47: A sketch of the display in the museum shop.

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Design in the Wild Gallery Things in their natural habitat

In contrary to the Spotlight this gallery is permanent — showing various objects that were in the library. This gallery is a visual representation of the history of the Design Library. Objects that were borrowed by people are shown in the environments they were used in. It is an optional, not essential, way of visually attracting more people to join in on the service.

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Collected images of objects in their ‘natural environment’, resulting from pictures taken by users of the Design Library. Such a display could fit both inside the exhibition space, atrium or corridors as well as in the museum shop. It is a low key though an effective way of showing how design is used by people ‘like you’.

The gallery will appeal to people as the images speak for themselves.

The exhibition is co-created by users of the library, establishing a long-term connection with the museum.

In this way, your image can become part of The Design Museum forever.

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Figure 48: An impression of the Design in the Wild Gallery.

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Success What is needed to get all of this to work?

The greatest challenge is to get enough people to actively participate in the service by becoming a member of The Design Library. Receiving and returning objects from the library should be a fluent experience and the application should be a pleasure to use.

Questions around iconic designs should be questions you want to answer: accessible, simple and engaging.

The Design Museum could use its existing network to the fullest, by partnering with companies to obtain design objects to fill the library. Later on, collaborations can result in newly created designs especially developed for the Design Library.

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TARGET & PURCHASE

USE EXISTING NETWORK

Sufficient supply of objects Imagine these four different ways to collect designs for The Design Library: 1. The Design Museum targets a certain design object and purchases multiple pieces for this specific purpose.

2. The Design Museum’s existing partners give objects on loan for a limited time period. This could be supporters, investors or companies that were part of an exhibition in the museum before. Examples of such companies are Camper, Anglepoise and Brompton.

3. Designs created by designers (in residence) especially for this service: partner up with design studios or universities in London to create new objects.

4. Design objects that didn’t make the permanent collection: museums often receive pieces that they already own or that don’t fit into the existing collection. If enough of these objects are collected, they could also become available to be borrowed.

COLLABORATE WITH DESIGNERS

PIECES FROM OWN COLLECTION

Promotion targeted at the right audience

Choose the right timespan

Online marketing of the service can be done within the existing pages of the Design Museum website. Social media accounts such as Twitter and Instagram can be used as a benefit to reach a wider audience.

Physical/offline promotion is necessary if the museum wants to reach people who are not yet familiar with the museum.

Visitors can keep the objects for one month. In case they wish to return the object sooner, this is always possible. Depending on the interest in the service and amount of users, it should be possible to request certain products or to extend your loan term if you wish to continue the object for a bit longer.

Financial feasibility Visitors are expected to take a membership in order to participate in the service. A choice between a temporary membership card with a one-time payment or a long term membership with annual payment is offered. Long term membership should offer additional benefits such as updates about the service, exclusive access to opening events of the Design Museum or priority when new objects are launched in the library.

Keep it secure Since all users leave their personal information behind, the Design Museum is always aware of who are using the objects. In order to be more certain that people treat objects with care, a deposit could be asked from them. Otherwise, the loan agreement should state that costs for damage on the objects are for the users.

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Evaluation The concept proposal consists of multiple design interventions that together form the design ecology.

Within this graduation project, the essential part is where user generated stories are presented to a novice audience. Does the concept in some way change the visitor’s mindset? Does it inspire them?

A final user test in the Design Museum gives some insights into how people interact with the concept and what they think of it.

The service as such is also presented to and discussed with staff members of the museum: do they see the added value for their own department?

What are possible roadblocks for setting up the Design Library?

The outcome of the user study and evaluation with staff result in a final conclusion of this graduation project. The evaluation phase and project end with a personal reflection in chapter 29.

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The effect Framing the visitors’ mindset but don’t be too suggestive.

Stories from the user’s point of view have the ability to implicate visitors in what they are watching and make them feel empathy. It shows that the museum sees the user as an expert, in a way lowering the exclusiveness of design and increasing the design confidence of other visitors.

The hypothesis is that being exposed to these stories will broaden people’s view of what design is and will increase their ability to look at design in a critical manner.

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Methodology To verify the hypothesis and to test if the way in which the stories are presented is understandable and engaging, a prototype will be built and tested in the current exhibition environment of the Design Museum. Even though the Design Museum’s current exhibition does not address the topic related context, it is considered valuable to test in the museum environment.

Set-up So-called user stories in the form of pictures, movies and text are created (potential content as if the service is already being used). Static designs in the form of wireframes and visual designs are turned into an

Figure 49: The prototype was set up in the atrium of the current building of the Design Museum.

Figure 50: Example of one of the screens showing objects matching the Anglepoit lamp.

interactive prototype using an iPad. Such a digital prototype can be used to demonstrate the product’s functionality in a way that it mimics the actual usage.

Appendix M shows all the created screens for the test.

The object and tablet are placed on a table, which offers the possibility to stand around the prototype (see figure 45). Visitors who show an interest in the place prototype are then approached with the question if they want to improve the Design Museum experience by sharing their opinion about the prototype. For interview transcripts, see appendix N.

Positive effects of the user generated stories The hypothesis considers two effects. First of all, visitors’ view is expected to be broadened after seeing user stories. Secondly, it will increase their ability to look at design in a critical manner.

A variety of opinions and users increase the perceived reliability of the story behind the design Novice visitors enter with a view of design that is relevant to their own personal context. So they might have a completely different idea on what it is the museum does. What they have read, what they have seen, what they like and what they dislike, it all has an influence. Figure 46 on the left page belongs with the following quote of one of the participants:

“I think people are focused on their opinion, their biases, their own way of thinking. I don’t look for colours, but for other people this colour could form a composition with other elements in the kitchen. That’s probably also design but in another way of thinking.”

Novice visitor (male, 30)

“People kind of get that there’s design in the expensive consumer things, but they don’t necessarily think as the understanding of design in every little thing that they touch and use.”

Novice visitor (male, 40)

Showing what different people think about the same object enables visitors to see different sides of the story.

The more different opinions presented, the more democratic it feels to visitors and the more they trust the trueness of the story.

“It’s kind of like looking to reviews on Amazon but then a better or more reliable way of getting information out of people who actually used an object in their normal life.

That’s what you normally do, you talk to friends…”

Visitor (female, 40, photographer)

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User generated stories reveal information about the usefulness and functionality of design The stories help visitors to put things in perspective.

When they see the comments, they realise how objects are actually used and what its benefits are to the people who wrote the stories. People mention to be interested in the different ways objects are used.

“I think you get an appreciation for more the functional side of design. So that involves a lot of like… like a bike for example, it doesn’t just sit there, you actually use it. So the design is used to make a physical experience better.”

Novice visitor (male, 25)

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The user stories trigger visitors to form and share an opinion about design After showing opinions and comments on the Anglepoise light, a need to express their own opinion on that specific object seems to arise with visitors.

The majority of visitors approached during the study says something about the lamp, especially those who own one or have had one in the past. This was striking since they were never asked if they want to share their thoughts on the design.

“Aha.. so in this way everyone can be the designer.

Because if they propose you some things that could be changed, it’s exactly designing. Everyone could improve something.”

“Like the chairs in the cafe, we were saying how comfortable they are, and that’s because they have been designed. Sometimes it’s about investing in something that is good design. But you’re thinking maybe it just looks fancy, or it’s just the brand. If you borrow it than you know if it’s actually worth it.”

Novice visitor (male, 30)

Novice visitor (female, 40)

Novice visitor (male, 35, programmer)

Rebecca Hossain works as the Head of Retail at the Design Museum and confirms that storytelling is very important in engaging visitors with objects.

The object of choice, an Anglepoise lamp, is one that many people can relate to. It is an international design icon, widely known but especially famous in GreatBritain. It is a product with a long history, people from different generations are familiar with it. The fact that this was the chosen object in the spotlight enabled more visitors to be able to tell a story about it.

“It has to have stories, this is what this user engagement is about. It’s not just ‘this product is made in 1973 - it’s designed by Braun’ you know, that’s not interesting enough. What are the stories that people can get into?”

Rebecca Hossain

“I might add some opinion about the lamp. I have one but to be honest I rather won’t use it. Because I finished my studies three years ago. I used it for studying at night. But the lamp stays.”

“I’ve actually got one myself. I don’t know if it’s the real one or not because I always happen to make these tighter again. I like the Anglepoise because you can put the light where you want it. The only downside is the tension always being wrong. But I use it on my computer, so sometimes I don’t want the light in my face, or just on the keyboard, not shining on the screen.”

Novice visitor (male, 70)

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Figure 51: Discussing the prototype with two visitors of the Design Museum, as captured on Saturday May 14, 2016.

Discussion of the tested prototype The evaluation study does give the idea that showing user generated stories around design objects has a positive effect on the way they perceive design and on their own ability to say something about design.

However, the study also revealed some downsides of the way in which the stories are presented to users.

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Stories of users are perceived as too ‘designed’ Having a consistent design throughout the user generated stories (both in terms of placement of items in the wireframe as well as the applied visual style) makes the interface easier to interpret for users.

However, using such a visual template also has an unwanted effect: users perceive stories as too ‘designed’ — it doesn’t feel immediately like the comments come from real people.

It is important to show that the displayed stories are genuine and not made up or steered too much by the Design Museum. A less generic design, leaving room for a personal touch, could enhance this.

The prototype does not invite visitors enough to interact with it A sign indicates the possibility to touch and swipe through the stories on the iPad. Visitors are hesitant in interacting with it and only do this when encouraged more explicit.

Visitors are not able to make sense of the prototype in a short time Based on his experience, curator Alex Newson mentions that visitors are likely to spend only a short time in front of an exhibit — maybe not even a minute. So it is important that visitors are able to make sense of what they see in one view, which is currently not the case.

People need a while to go through the slides before they understand what they are looking at. The following problems are experienced by visitors: 1. There is no clear link between this display (interactive prototype) and the current exhibition (Cycle Revolution).

2. There is no overview of comments or ability to zoom out and see the overall result.

3. There is too much text on each individual slide of the prototype.

“Personally, I’m always a bit sceptical about comments, because I always think I can easily make it up.”

Expert visitor (male, 30)

“Some questions are interesting, like ‘which part of the lamp do you prefer more’. But I really have to read a lot to get an idea what it is about.”

Expert visitor (female, 40)

Both for questions asked to users and answers shown to visitors it might be good to sort questions according to design themes. In this way, people can make sense of the questions/answers easier. Themes such as use, aesthetics, identity, function and taste. Or even relate it to the three themes of the permanent exhibition: designer, maker and user.

Critical notes from a curator “A lot of people do come to us and expect design to be about chairs, I guess industrial design. You often see people in press talking about a new product that is design and they only talk about what it looks like. They talk about how it’s used but then they stop talking about that as design.

But actually the design is everything through it, it’s not just the casing that it’s in, or the industrial design of the product. It’s the service design, the interaction design, the interface. It’s everything around that. But people don’t always understand that it effects on all of these different elements. So that’s part of what we do, but what we need to do more is to help people understand all the different areas in their life that intersect with the design world. And actually what is the value of design on those areas and on their lives.

How does the library deal with types of non-physical design? Can you borrow architecture or are we limiting ourselves to products and fashion? Do you provide people with things they possibly want to by, rather than being so abstract? Or can you even put some of the developing prototypes of the Designers in Residence in the library?

I think your idea would have an effect on some people.

Different people will respond in different ways. As an organisation we need to make sure that we give a variety of voices back to people so some need to be that authoritative voice that explained it as the expert.

But also we want it to be democratic, we want people to understand that their voice is important. That here is someone like you that is saying something. You can see why it’s important and why you might agree with it, why don’t you add your voice to this too? It really needs to do both of those things. Not necessarily in the same place at the same time but somewhere within the organisation.

It’s important that visitors are able to create their own meaning. And that’s powerful for people. Not everyone, but a lot of people are at their best when they are allowed to draw the links between things. So you give them tools to make a decision and then they can make a decision.

You might have to be careful with how many tools you give them, or what type of tools you give them. You can force them to only making one decision and trick them into thinking they’ve made it, or actually that’s the only option they had to come to. Or you can leave it more open and they can come to a number of different decisions. But you can play with that, you can narrow down the options by the information that you give them.”

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People’s response So, when do I hear more about this Designotheek?

Methodology Rather than seeing if the service can be built in terms of technical feasibility, the idea is to see whether the Design Museum should be building this service in the first place. Do museum visitors and employees express interest in the service and would they be willing to invest time and effort in it?

The value of the offer is communicated to users in individual and group interviews (depending on the visitors’ group size). The visitor’s attention is caught by putting the object and prototype out there. The service and its features are presented to potential participants by explaining the idea in words.

A concluding session with members of the Design Museum’s staff is held to share the final concept, gather feedback from their point of view and conclude with recommendations for further finalising of the project.

124 Figure 52: Employees discussing the potential of the concept, as captured on Thursday, May 12, 2016.

Set-up The set up for interviewing visitors is similar to the set up of the user study in the first chapter.

The session with staff members starts with a final presentation in front of eight members from different departments. They are then given the opportunity to ask questions about the presented concept in general.

Later on, input is given on each specific part of the design ecology. The discussion is moderated by Martijn van der Heijden.

Insights extracted from visitors and staff members Staff members feel sympathy for the idea. They think the idea of a library is charming, in a time when people are using libraries less and less. They also see a fit with their mission statement. Shaun Fradd, Campaign Manager of the new Design Museum, agrees that it would tick all of the boxes: it would help to explain the process of design, help people to understand their favourite designs and see if something is considered good or bad design.

The idea of the Design Library generates interest and enthusiasm among visitors Many interviewed visitors show an interest in the project and express their wish to track the project or be involved in it. They ask if the project is available in public, on a website, a Facebook page, anything.

“I think the concept of giving people an object and asking them for their experiences is really interesting. I studied design personally so if in the beginning I had the chance to borrow something it would help to understand what design really means instead of thinking that design is a style thing. For most of the people it’s just aesthetics.”

Imagining a library with physical objects evokes suggestions about the kind of objects visitors expect to see in there. They start mentioning objects they would want to borrow.

“Well, a good light like the Anglepoise of course. And a good kitchen knife. And more of those nice placemats that we have, we bought two but more of those would be nice.

Oh! And this chair, it’s like an egg, with a big cut out of it.

On a stand. On a single stand. Oh, it’s just gorgeous. Yes, I’d love one of those. But, you know, the knife will do, a really sharp one. Oh, I wouldn’t mind some of the cloths.

I came for the fashion exhibition here, and they did this amazing dresses, that would be great…”

Novice visitor (female, 60)

“I saw some nice bicycles in here, up there in the exhibition, that I would like to use.”

Novice visitor (male, 60)

Borrowing objects from the Design Library is wanted/ needed by visitors People using design allows for them to understand through practising and have a taste of design before they buy it.

Because you can read all you like about an Anglepoise, but once you get it home you think “oh, so that’s what it is…”

“There’s a lot of things you can only understand once you’ve used it for a while.”

Visitor Experience staff member

Expert visitor (female, 40)

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“For me, when you’re quite poor, you want to try out something before you buy it. I did happen to have the Philippe Starck lemon squeezer and I liked it, I might say don’t give me five things but just give me that one thing.

To see that I really enjoyed having it.”

Novice visitor (female, 60)

“You buy something and you use it, if you hadn’t bought it you wouldn’t know what was good about that thing. So it makes your appreciation… broadens your appreciation, you can try things that you wouldn’t buy yourself.

Because if you borrow things you can explore.”

Novice visitor (male, 40)

The Design Library as a way to learn more about the physical audience.

From a demographic point of view, it would be interesting to see a range of different users. David Houston, who is producer at the Schools Programme, mentioned this:

“What I like about it is the feeling of community. The way they motivate each other. What I find interesting is how an 8-year-old understands why certain things are important to adults. Why are certain things important for certain people? Who uses that, who’s that making life easier for? Getting those stories.”

David Houston

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The Design Library as a vignette for the museum’s exhibitions By connecting objects in the Design Library to the content of the (temporary) exhibitions, visitor expectations about their museum visit can be shaped.

Clarity on exhibitions before entering them is something much appreciated by visitors. It can even be a showcase for the Design Museum in general.

“It becomes a way to start a conversation with people, a way in, a poster. There’s something about seeing the physical object.”

Josephine Chanter

“One of the coolest things about it is that nobody else is doing it. It’s such a kind of… it’s a bit of a faith thing, isn’t it?”

Rebecca Hossain

“Because nobody else can do it, they don’t have the sorts of objects. They’re art museums.”

Angela Tye

Rebecca agrees and even brings up a personal anecdote that illustrates these differences between audiences: “I have this thing that my husband and I, we still type on our smartphones with our fingers. But all my screenagers, who had these devices since a young age, use their thumbs. It’s that whole thing of, the same object is used completely differently by a different demographic, different experiences, or whether you’re an early adopter… that’s very interesting actually.”

Rebecca Hossain

Critical points To explain the service with all its separate parts takes quite some time. The story behind the service can be stronger by simplifying it. This starts with a consistency in style and calling everything by the same name. If everything is called ‘Design Library’, visitors have a frame flow as they go around through the museum. The Design Museum already has many different exhibitions and other things going on.

It will only happen in the museum if someone picks up the responsibility What is it exactly that they want to achieve as a museum with this service? That must be really clear.

That it will have great PR benefits, but it is not just a PR stunt. It does not just have a commercial driver. What are the exact aims why the museum should be doing this?

Also in terms of where it fits within the existing structure of the organisation, there should be no confusion. There are several departments which this concept touches upon. However, if it does not fit within one of those departments, chances are that no department will pick up the responsibility for managing this.

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The future The biggest crowd-sourced museum in the world!

With the new Design Museum, many of the challenges identified during this graduation project will be tackled for sure. This year it is going to happen, people have been talking about the move to Kensington for a long time and are looking forward to the opening in November. The idea of a new venue inside a historical building, displaying innovative works triggers people’s imagination. That in itself will already attract a much wider and larger audience than the current museum does.

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This is exactly the right time for the Design Museum to do something different. They have the chance to lead the way and set the standards of a 21st-century museum. The proposed Design Library could give an extra dimension to the visit – showing the crowd that this museum dares to approach things in a different way.

In order to truly engage a wider range of people with the new Design Museum, they should not just offer a smooth and lovely museum visit. On the long run, it is not only about collecting the right objects and curating a blockbuster exhibition. There lies an opportunity in collecting stories, from the people themselves. This project has shown several times that people will be interested in hearing these stories. As mentioned in chapter 6, people value objects that bring back personal memories, objects that elicit an emotional response.

The Design Library is a great way of enabling active participation of visitors. Instead of using the concept of a marketplace, a desire of the museum expressed during formulation of the assignment, the concept of a library is used. So there is always a reason to come back. Looking at the engagement model presented

towards the end of the intro phase (chapter 4), the final design touches upon all of the 4 ways to engage with a design collection: 1.Discovery Appreciate the design object, watch it and feel the desire to...

2.Ownership ...Collect it, borrow it from the museum, in order to...

3.Understanding ...Immerse in using the object, playing with it, discussing its value and...

4.Sharing ...Share opinions and experiences with other people, to let them also appreciate.

The design as tested proved to elicit a positive response from people as well as stimulate them to think more critically about their own opinions and values. Though this was not only through showing the user generated stories but also through asking them questions in person. Explaining the service to visitors is all part of the time they are willing to invest in the experience.

Time and attention span are scarce resources (as discussed in chapter 7), what you want is to get visitors to the stage as quick and efficient as possible.

The design proposal opens up more questions, like what will happen if you do not get the objects back from visitors? How does the museum make sure things do not just disappear? What if a visitor wants to join but is not living in London? Can visitors book objects in advance? How will the stories be archived? This thesis does not give an answer to these questions, yet, it does suggest some changes for future development of the concept.

The Librarian: giving the Design Library a face “That humanising things is so important. Perhaps we need a librarian.”

Josephine Chanter

The library will need someone that curates the collection, someone that chooses the most beautiful, nice and innovative products. Then there needs to be and someone that moderates the content as well.

Giving these responsibilities to a librarian can give the Design Library a face. Someone that motivates users to add and edit as well. It also increases your motivation to return the object. There is a face and a smile behind the service.

Consider abandoning the Design Library app Questions should always be considered from both the user as well as the museum visitor. Ideally, you would experiment with questions, leave questions out as soon as you realise there is a lack of response to it, or when answers are not useful or interesting enough.

The human aspect is something to implement in here as well. Having a librarian motivating users to add answers, a face and a smile behind the library.

The existence of an application, in general, is negotiable. The Design Museum already has an application and a website, an additional separate application might be confusing for users. In that case, it only requires unnecessary costs and time.

Moreover, with the app at home and the display at the Design Museum a closed environment is created. It might be much more interesting to make the stories accessible via social media. Enhance a feeling of community and let users motivate each other. In the current design, there are two separate platforms used for questioning and answering people. By using one platform for both practices, conversations between users and visitors of the Design Museum are stimulated.

The earlier described evaluation study in the Design Museum revealed that visitors want to express their

thoughts and opinions on the design object and service in general. The display of visitors comments should fulfil this need by giving visitors the possibility to leave a response. By using social media platforms you can eventually include the whole world in commenting and sharing stories and make design truly accessible.

Whether choosing for an application or for one or more social platforms - there is not one universal way of doing it. It should be a platform the Design Museum is most comfortable with and one that works best for a large part of their audience.

Merge the Design in the Wild Gallery with the Spotlight Rather than separating the Design in the Wild Gallery from the Spotlight display of user stories, it seems logical to not distinguish these two. The display, in general, should be visually attractive and engaging in the interaction. A filter as proposed in the final design could definitely benefit this engagement. There should be a balance between showing the breadth and variety of the archive as well as showing individual, personal stories that are simple and engaging.

Breadth of the archive

“There’s something about the object being constant and humans being variables. That’s kind of fascinating.”

Josephine Chanter

What you eventually want to show in the museum is also the breadth of the archive and the volume of content that you’ve gathered over time. That visitors can sit there for half an hour, just going endlessly along the different audiences, being overwhelmed by all the different perspectives on the same object.

Variety of objects, questions and answers A broad rather than narrow focus is desired, this counts for the objects featured in the library as well as the questions asked to the users of the objects. Only having a handful of objects should be avoided, since the risk is

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Figure 53: Hand-written visitor comments on the ‘Designs of the Year 2014’ exhibition at the Design Museum (Source: Design Museum).

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that the perspective or idea of ‘good’ design is steered too much by the Design Museum and does not come from a democratic voice of their visitors.

The trick is to find the right balance between being explicit and leaving enough room for own interpretation. You want users to know what the questions are really about and why they are relevant.

But you also do not want to steer them too much into giving the desired answer. You want to ask questions that generate a variety of different answers and that open up more questions. Selecting certain answers to be displayed is also a way of curating the experience.

Here counts as well, find the sweet spot between showing valuable answers which allow for deeper inquiry of objects and showing a broad range/variety of answers which allow for new perspectives. In a way, we should not curate the answers too carefully.

Simplifying the user stories Visitors have to first read through the question, understand the question and then read through and understand the answers. The answer can often be understood on itself, without necessarily knowing what the question was. In the current design, there is quite some overlap between questions and answers.

All potentially unnecessary information should be cut out of the stories. Text can be reduced by focusing on the answer instead of the question. To compare; video interviews often also cut out the person asking questions. The interviewee is then asked to rephrase the answer in such a way that it includes part of the question.

Distinguishing generic questions that are applicable to multiple objects from questions that are object specific is also a way to let people make sense of the stories.

In that way, on the long run, people can recognise questions easier and can make relationships between different stories and objects. Generic questions might also help to get a wider response. Furthermore, it saves work for the Design Museum, not having to generate a large amount of questions with every release of a new object in the library.

Leave a personal touch to the user’s stories Stories from users do not necessarily have to be gathered online or digital. There is always a physical object that somehow travels back and forth to the library, so why can’t the stories be as well? Notes in a person’s own handwriting have a much more personal feeling to them than an online text message. That is something the museum’s staff noticed when setting up a comment board in one of the earlier exhibitions (figure 48).

Make it social: the biggest crowd-sourced Design Museum in the world!

In order to make the Design Library even less exclusive and more democratic, we should allow for people to add objects to the library as well. In this way it can become the world’s largest co-curated design collection, truly including all visitors and creating a democratic view on design. It can start with allowing for nominating objects and evolve into people bringing objects to the library. For example: you can only borrow something if you add something as well.

Pop-up Design Library One of the spaces in the new Design Museum, next to the permanent exhibition, was supposedly reserved for display of videos. However, due to a lack of budget for creating the videos, this space does not yet have a purpose. This is an opportunity for expanding space for the Design Library inside the museum.

The option to have the Design Library as a pop-up location anywhere in London, or even anywhere in the world, still seems like an interesting one.

The risk for the museum is that they might lose control over the library once it moves to spaces out of their own building. As Head of Retail Rebecca mentions:

“I think we need to get it right in the museum first.”

Rebecca Hossain

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Let’s look back Peaks and valleys of a journey called graduation

So, this is it. The journey has come to an end, which is still quite hard to imagine, having worked on this project for the past almost ten months. In many ways, this was the most challenging part of my studies.

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From the beginning I had quite high expectations of the project itself and of my capabilities to come up with a great, life changing, result. The first time when I came back from London with an enormous amount of images, observations and interview transcripts I realized I gathered so much information that it was almost too diffuse to make sense of. I spent days staring at the wall with data I created at Fabrique (‘are you solving a murder case or something?’ – they asked me).

Making choices, narrowing down the options, finding focus. That was definitely the thing I struggled most with during the project. Always writing down all the possible solutions to a problem, searching for different ways to organise them in order to justify decisions to myself. ‘Let it go’, was something that I think all of my different mentors have said to me at least once.

Designing for a target group with basic knowledge requires a solution that appeals to them, that they can understand and that is simple. Keeping it simple becomes only harder when not making choices, which is why my final design, in the end, does not really come across as ‘simple’. It consists of many different parts which require quite some explanation. I noticed this

not only when telling the idea to visitors but even when discussing it with my designer friends. I couldn’t let go of the different parts of the concept, worried of not delivering a complete service to the museum and being afraid of making the wrong decisions.

At times, my ideas were criticised, which is not a bad thing, though I sometimes I found myself taking critique too personal. My response was then to close myself off until I was happy with the ideas again, rather than engaging in a discussion.

It was good to work at Fabrique, in a lively environment with fun people around. People that I could have involved closer in my project – though I found it difficult to weigh people’s criticism. Sometimes after a casual talk with someone about my project, it would completely reconsider all the work I did and change my mind again and again. I already had my head full of the comments from my supervisors.

Something I learned working at Fabrique, with the Design Museum and two professors with also their own busy schedule: you have to fight for your own time and the importance of your project. I know that if I can be more secure and confident about my own ideas, it can help in bringing ideas to the table in a more enthusiastic way. If you can make other people enthusiastic and make them able to imagine your idea coming to life, then they are much more willing to invest time in you.

I experienced this during the final evaluation study in London when I met people who truly believed in my idea and kindly offered their help to realise this. Their enthusiasm pushed me to finish the last phase of this project.

The three trips to London were definitely times I really enjoyed. (Finally) seeing the museum in real life, meeting all the people in person and immersing in the museum environment was amazing. Arranging contact with employees, making business cards, being invited to the opening of a new exhibition – it all became real. One of the highlights was giving a presentation at Audience Day in November, that was attended and appreciated by a huge group of staff members. I liked that my research opened up their eyes, as well as their experiences opened up mine.

Now that the final result is here, I still think that I should have done things differently, or could have shown more of myself as a designer. Though in the end, do really think that the idea of a Design Library really has potential. Perhaps not in this form, but I already have some other ideas in mind to improve it. I hope that when this graduation project is finished, there will be less (time) pressure so that I can think about these ideas in a more open minded and relaxed way. Perhaps then it can still become reality.

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Photograph by L. Marchesini, October 16 (2015)

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motivating visitors to engage with the Design Museum