In this article, we investigate how small museums running on volunteers deal with the challenge of innovation given that the future is becoming more digital. From the literature, little is known about the strategies and practices for designing innovative visitor experiences in small museums and about the skills needed for doing so. In particular, we were interested in understanding how professionals working in small museums design experiences that mainly appeal to and engage a younger public and how digital innovation can play a role in both attracting and keeping such audiences engaged with the museum. Our most important conclusion is that the question of “how to innovate” is misplaced and that small museums rather need to capitalize on the strong tie with the community they serve. Only in this way can they lower the threshold to access and connect to a broader public that is younger and more diverse.

The recent pandemic crisis, coupled with the rapid development of new technologies, has shown what new opportunities exist for designing enriched museum experiences. In this article, we collected the experience of six Dutch design agencies that are known for their portfolio in applying new technologies to museum experiences, also internationally. We start by clarifying the concept of museum experience design. Then, we discuss the role technology can play in designing museum experiences. We first review the types of technology that were mostly used in museums in the pre-Covid period and clarify the purpose of their use. Subsequently, we elaborate on the trends that design agencies see as the most important developments emerging post-pandemic and reveal the dreams they have for future applications of technology in museum experiences.

The notion of relevance is often used as a concept to be considered for making a museum matter to its visitors. The term, however, is rarely operationalized for use by designers, practitioners, or scientists in their work on museum experiences. We propose an integrated framework for designing relevant museum experiences, in which we distinguish between four stages of seeding and growing relevance in new audiences, called “trigger”, “engage”, “consolidate” and “relate“. The framework proposes to see designing for relevance as developing ways of integrating meaning-making, play and acceptable visitor effort across all these stages. It is intended to provide sensitizing concepts for use in further research on designing for relevance, as well as in design-related activities such as crafting requirements for new museum experiences, analyzing existing museum experiences and developing new museum experiences.

The museum world is rapidly changing from being collection-centred to being community-centred and for the public. Apart from broadening access to collections through, for example, digitisation initiatives, new ways of involving the public more meaningfully and at various levels have emerged. Experiences inside museums have become more engaging, by extending the experience beyond the physical visit, or by involving the public in various forms of crowdsourced stewardship of collections. In this book, we explore the design implications that go along with these developments, all concerned with diversifying and making the engagement of the public in museum experiences more rewarding. We focus on the design implications associated with museums reaching out to crowds beyond their local communities, on experimenting with novel technologies and on conceiving experiences embedded in connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. By looking at and reflecting on trends, we attempt to sketch a picture of how future museums will change and, particularly, how they will relate to their public as a result of responding to or embracing these trends.

A general trend of museums and cultural heritage institutions besides digitizing their collections is to involve the public more and at various levels. Technology plays an increasingly important role in this involvement. Developments we have observed in museum experience design, include trends towards 1) dialogical engagement of the public; 2) addressing crowds as audiences; 3) the use of Internet of Things (IoT) and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) technology in museums; and 4) designing for museum systems and institutional ecologies instead of for individual museums only. In this one-day workshop we especially focus on exploring the implications of museums reaching out to crowds beyond their local communities, and of museums increasingly becoming part of connected museum systems and large institutional ecosystems. By means of a tangible game we will brainstorm about future opportunities and challenges, cluster and evaluate them, and suggest future work.