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 present work introduces a cyclical model which showcases the process of immersion during Immersive Technological Experiences (ITEs) such as Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality. This model is based on the identified concepts around immersion and immersive environments across 30 years. The concepts' similarities were used to organize them on a cyclical model by acknowledging the user's presence at the beginning and end of immersive experiences. The proposed model's value relies on its cyclical approach based on a user-centred perspective and having a general overview of the immersion process. The Immersive cycle can serve as a mapping tool for developers and researchers, thanks to the inclusion of guidelines that complements the model. Both of these were used in three different examples of ITEs. Furthermore, the cyclical model could be used as a tool for ideation and conceptualization during the early stages of developing immersive experiences. Nevertheless, it is recognized that this is the first step in developing this model; therefore, it still needs to be validated and improved based on tests with developers, designers and researchers in the field.

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.

This article describes a user-centered design experiment investigating positive and negative effects of adding game rules to brainstorms. We studied effects on brainstorm output and user experience and behavior. A coin-based gamification was developed with rules intended to improve brainstorm output in relation to quality and quantity of ideas. However, the invasiveness of a gamification can be expected to affect users both positively and negatively. To find an optimum between positive and negative effects of gamification invasiveness, we tested 5 different rule-sets with varying quantity and quality of rules. The results demonstrated that game rules stimulating competitive game behavior improved the quantity and quality of brainstorm output. Yet the invasiveness of the gamification also hindered this positive effect, due to discussions about rules and mandatory game behavior. From these results we deduced 3 types of invasiveness evoked by the rules’ qualities: a) governing rules led to negative cognitive invasiveness, b) forcing rules caused positive as well as negative behavioral invasiveness, and c) adding coins may have led to positive affective invasiveness (i.e., a playful attitude). We conclude our study with recommendations on designing and researching gamification invasiveness in real-life contexts.

Museums give much consideration to how visitors experience their exhibits. Mobile technologies, such as apps on mobile phones and tablets can capture the visitor experience in an automated, on-the-spot manner. Two apps were designed and used to capture visitors’ experiences of interactive exhibits at a science museum. Based on our observations, we discuss (a) the appeal of the technology, (b) the integration of this technology in the overall museum visit and (c) the processing of the collected experience data. Based on our observations, we recommend that museums and science centres critically evaluate the above-mentioned points when considering implementing mobile technologies to capture the visitor experience. Furthermore, we advise institutions to approach mobile technologies as product service systems and take into account the infrastructure that is required to make mobile technologies work.

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.

Recent accidents (News, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2015) show that crowded events can quickly turn into tragedies. The goal of crowd management is to avoid such accidents through careful planning and implementation. Crowd management practices are collaborative efforts between the different actors of the crowd management team and the crowd that depend on effective handling, sharing, and communication of information. Safety and comfort of a crowd depend on the success of such efforts. We have studied current practices and the role of technology through interviews to crowd managers. Our findings show that event planning and monitoring can be complex and sophisticated, but are operated with little support from technology. Crowd managers intend to increase their use of technology, but they have been so far dissatisfied by existing solutions. We provide recommendations for a bigger role of technology in crowd management.

When involving children in the design process, it is important to understand the novelty of their design solutions. This paper reviews the applicability of an often cited novelty metric Shah et al. (2003) for the comparison of two design methods conducted with 8-10 year old children. The novelty metric is applied to data that is different for a number of parameters, such as a different design phase (exploratory instead of conceptual), size and variety. The results yielded by this novelty metric are not straightforward. This paper describes the difficulties encountered and introduces an alternative approach. The alternative approach leads to better results for any amount of data, for an exploratory phase. Additionally the paper explains how this approach increases the sensitivity for detecting differences in novelty when comparing design methods.

This paper introduces a virtual tour, Visit the Louvre, designed specifically to engage older adults in an immersive visit through part of the Louvre by a distant real-life guide. An initial diary study and a creative workshop were conducted to understand the needs and values of older adults and how to support participation to virtual museum visits with a video-based communication system. Preliminary results show that 'virtual visitors' experienced high levels of social and spatial presence; immersion and engagement were quite high independent of the level of interactivity of the guide, or the presence of others.

In this paper we propose a new design approach in which positive emotional experiences are used to incite desirable behaviors, based on the insight that specific experiences can motivate particular behaviors. In the approach, designers first identify users' concerns and expectations and deduce from those the psychological needs that underlie them. Positive emotions are then sought that match the identified psychological needs. The positive emotions with their related thought-Action tendencies then inspire the designer to formulate design intentions in terms of experiences and behaviors to target for, aimed at guiding the design process. The approach was developed for, and applied to a design case for the Mauritshuis, a museum for classical art in the Hague, the Netherlands. An app was developed for engaging a new target group of young adult travelers: To enhance their art appreciation and to motivate them to explore the local Dutch culture. We explain the various phases including user studies, generating ideas and testing designs, and discuss our experiences with applying this approach.

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.