Feel the art

Creating museum involvement by tapping universal human concerns

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Abstract

This paper reports an experience-driven design project that was commissioned by the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum. The aim was to cause a shift in the relationship between visitors and the art collection from one that is experienced as ‘distant’ to one that is experienced as ‘committed’. In five steps, an online application was conceptualised, developed, and implemented. The application aims to enable people to express, share, and interpret their feelings towards the Rijksmuseum collection. The first step was to formulate a profile of universal (i.e. context independent) human concerns that are related to the experience of commitment. Based on a context vision of ‘experiencing art at the Rijksmuseum’ (formulated in Step 2), the universal concern profile was transformed into a situated concern profile (Step 3). A design position was formulated, focusing on the expression and interpretation of feelings (Step 4), and a web application was conceptualised and implemented (Step 5). The case is presented as an example of a design project in which conceptions of universal human values are used to effectively design products or services that have a predefined experiential intention.

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