This project is a collaboration between TUDelft and Sherlocked, one of the stakeholders of BLUE MIRROR. The aim of this project is bringing knowledge and fun together in a sustainability themed portable escape room experience. During the Research phases, the current market of available experiences closely related to the new design was mapped out, looking at competitors, users and trends. Target users have been involved to cocreate the design, using context mapping, journey mapping and generative sessions. Which helped grasp the expectations and emotions during use, and gave valuable insights for the design. This report delivers a full concept of the designed user interactions with the room itself and embodiment of these interactions within the room. This includes designing the interfaces, as well as the narrative that guides them through the experience. The interface can consist of a combination of digital and physical components that together allow users to solve challenges within the room. Interactions of users with these objects will be designed so that the level of difficulty is suitable for the audience to achieve the goal within the allotted time. The narrative will be the overarching structure and information layering of the design that helps to carry the educative message in a playful manner to ensure it is an engaging learning experience. The report will conclude with suggestions for further research based on qualitative interviews with the target audience.

The aim of this graduation project was to design a play-based exhibit piece for the Green Kids' Museum in Kenya with the objective to raise awareness of biodiversity and ecosystems in a playful manner. Global climate is changing at rapid speed, resulting in a loss of biodiversity and the breakdown of ecosystems (Damiens, 2021). It is important that people are made aware of the dramatic consequences if these ecosystems would be lost forever. Yet, children in Kenya are not fully aware of the richness of the ecosystems within their own country, hence there is a clear need for inspiring education. The Green Kids’ Museum will be built with the objective to raise children’s awareness of the different aspects of sustainability, with one room dedicated to biodiversity and ecosystems in Kenya. This research project has explored different ways to transfer knowledge in a playful way about biodiversity and ecosystems fitting children in the 9 to 11 year old age range. The outcome of this exploration resulted in a game that serves as an interactive exhibit piece helping children recognize the different ecosystems in Kenya. In the initial phase of this project research was done in three different Dutch museums to understand what type of museum installation attracts children. This showed that children are mostly attracted to large striking installations that are interactive and require little to no instructions and installations where they can build something or win a prize. These aspects were taken into account during the ideation phase; each design needed to have at least one of the previously mentioned aspects to make it attract to children. The chosen design had the first three aspects incorporated and resulted in a first iteration that was tested with the target group. The evaluation with the target group was split into a physical test and an online test. The results of this test showed that the children enjoyed the game, but expressed the wish to play the game for a longer amount of time and at an increased level of complexity. A number of unfamiliar animals were added to the game increasing the complexity and duration of the game. The design was evaluated with manufacturers in Kenya to validate that the product could be fully manufactured in Kenya. Based on their feedback some alterations were applied to the design making it ready for manufacturing. Manufacturers were selected based on their efforts to produce sustainably. This selection was done based on the manufacturing techniques catalogue, created by the researcher for this project, providing a comparison of different manufacturers in Kenya that execute that same technique. Based on these results a final design has been created. The final concept, “The Great Kenya Eco Challenge”, is an interactive exhibit piece teaching Kenyan children how to recognize the different ecosystems in Kenya. This is done by matching different animals to the ecosystem they live in using a button system. The exhibit piece enables children to learn about ecosystems in a playful and fun way.

In the Spring of 2019, Museum het Prinsenhof Delft will present the Mojo Backstage exhibition, celebrating the 50th birthday of Mojo Concerts. In this exhibition, the visitor will learn about the developments Mojo has brought to the world of music, and experience what it is like to be at a festival. Over the years, festival food has become an increasingly important part of this experience. This thesis describes the process of designing an installation that lets the exhibition visitor experience the past and present of festival food. To obtain a thorough understanding of the context of the to be designed installation, different topics are researched. The company starring the exhibition is studied, and through talking to the museum’s stakeholders a better understanding of the exhibition and its intended visitors is gained. By combining literature with user interview insights, the different aspects that make up the festival (food) experience are identified, resulting in a festival food journey. Also, multisensory mindmaps are used as a way to gain valuable insights about the festival food experience, resulting in an overview of the various ways visitor’s senses are stimulated throughout each of the journey’s steps. Finally, a list of developments in festival food is compiled through online research and interviewing festival visitors and food stall employees. Utilizing various ideation methods, several concept directions are developed. By evaluating these through talking to the museum stakeholders and the intended target group, doing imaginary walkthroughs through the eyes of the different personas and testing them on the proposed interaction qualities and evaluation points, one concept direction is chosen to further develop. The design proposal utilizes a large printed festival floor, on which 7 piles of trash are displayed as a medium to convey the story of the previously identified developments in festival food. On the festival floor, several objects are placed to recreate the festival ambience. Also, speakers are placed throughout the exhibit playing a composed festival soundscape. At the high-peak tent food stall, the visitor can exchange their Mojo Backstage Coin (which they received when buying their museum ticket) for a Frietzak Vol Festival Voedsel: a bag holding several foods that represent today’s festival food offer, with an informative text printed on its inside. The concept is then assessed by performing several prototype user tests and an additional evaluation through the eyes of all personas. Also, feedback is gained from the stakeholders and the concept is tested against the evaluation points. Afterwards, several of the gained insights are used for a final iteration of the exhibit, and recommendations for further development steps are presented. Although the proposed concept needs further refinement before it can be placed in the exhibition, this project proves that several of its components are able to let the visitor experience the past and present of festival food.

In the current medialized world, it has become of great importance for citizens to know how to deal with the media accordingly. Understanding and having a critical attitude towards the media content that we “consume” and being able to work with media devices and platforms has become as important as learning to read and write. Sound and Vision, thé institute of media in the Netherlands therefore wants to offer a product for children in group 7/8 (Dutch education system, age 10-12) that can be used in the classroom, to make them more media literate. My context mapping research with several groups of children throughout the Netherlands, showed that children use many different media devices and are very active on social media. They are competent in accessing information and creating their own media content. Among these children, YouTube is the most popular platform on which countless hours of influencer videos are watched. However, children are very influenceable in this stage of their lives and take the information provided by the influencers often as the truth. The children have too little analytical skills and have to improve their ‘analyze’ competence: understanding a media message through textual and contextual analysis. Additionally, interviews with several teachers gave insights in appropriate teaching methods for this age group and in this context. In group 7/8, children learn best by doing and experimenting. They prefer to work together and with theme that is connected to their personal life. Based on these insights, the workshop ‘de media schatkist’ was designed. The workshop’s learning objective is ‘critical examination and viewing comprehension’. The children will take a better look at media content and think about missing or misleading information. In the workshop examples of earlier and recent influencer advertisement videos are used. These videos are short and easy to compare for the children because they always contain the same elements and structure. The elements serve as subthemes in the workshop: the setting, the sound and the actor in the advertisement. The children discover these themes in three parts. The first part contains analytical questions about the original audiovisual content from the Sound and Vision archive. In the second part, they discover the effects of content alteration of the original content. In the last part, the children are invited and supported to create media content themselves and to create a visual story. In the museum of Sound and Vision, the visitors are taken into a media world with all kinds of installations. To also bring this experience to the school, the classroom will be transformed into several small media environments. The children will receive boxes that through opening will create the environment, see figure 1. In the boxes, the children find products and attributes for their playfull active and coorperative media production assignment. Every theme has its own environment: a film set, a sound studio and the actors dressing room.

The current tour in the Rietveld Schröderhouse is outdated. Augmented reality can be the ideal solution to update the tour. This report looks into the possibilities for adding this.

In this Master’s graduation thesis, the goal was to develop three distinct design concepts that address the problems that small museums are facing in attracting young visitors and relaying their relevance to this hard-to-reach target group. The design challenge was approached with the concept of relevance as an initial framing. To this end, several stages of analysis were performed. First, a study was done of the definitions and inherent challenges of small museums, and the implications of these challenges towards designing solutions for teenagers. Several themes and insights were discovered in this phase, such as the use of museum communities, and to explore and harness the stories that belong the contents of a museum. The second analysis phase consisted of a theoretical study of the target in order to specify the specific age group and further characteristics, and a design workshop that was done with high school students, to gain insights into the sentiments of the target group towards museums. Among other things, it was discovered that such elements as adventure and identity are very effective in speaking to teenagers. From these two phases, a set of overarching themes was compiled, which acted as a inspiration and soft criteria for the idea synthesis. Eventually, three concepts were developed. The first, History Defense, is a mobile game that aims to make teenagers familiar with small museums and their value to society. It tells a compelling and immersive story that underlines the importance of local heritage in a classic battle between good and evil. The game is primarily played on a mobile device, from anywhere, but incorporate real-time (and real-world) events that encourage players to visit a museum and learn about its contents and stories. The game’s main goal is to make the players familiar with the cultural and historical value of local heritage institutions. The second concept is called Haunted Museums. This is a narrative framework that helps museums to attract young visitors by making the museum ‘haunted’. Museums create a personalized story based on their collection, and host thematic events to support the narrative. Through overarching themes that change annually, museums can tell exciting stories and create immersive experiences for visitors. The culmination of the yearly theme is an event week, where museums can decorate the museum to match the theme, invite performers, and create other immersive experiences for their visitors. Because the themes and promotion of the events are centrally coordinated, the platform becomes a quality label for immersive museum experiences. The third and final concept, Treasures, is a social platform that allows its users to explore artworks online and gather suggested artwork and museum pieces into personal collections. Based on the collections they have built and the interests those collections imply, users get continually improving personalized suggestions other artworks they might like, and add to their collections. Collections may take one of several forms, such as personal favorites, wishlists or checklists for seeing objects in real life, or collections that depict a specific theme or story. Finally, the three concepts were evaluated with both museums and teenagers, and the findings of these evaluations sessions were compiled as final recommendations for the further development of the concepts. After that, a personal theoretical analysis was done as a way to demonstrate how the concepts differ from each other, and give suggestions for which concept to choose for further development.

The goal of this thesis is to design a digital media solution that can improve the visitor experience at the Van Gogh Museum by improving the visitor flow through the permanent exhibition galleries of the museum. By understanding the current visitor experience at the Van Gogh Museum, looking at goals and motivations of different visitor categories to the museum and looking for literature on museum visiting phases, a design concept was created. The final design concept consists of an interactive surface, placed at the beginning of the exhibition. Visitors can use this surface to personalize their own multimedia guide. This personalizing is done by adding topic related content to an existing story structure. This ensures all visitors follow a logical story through the exhibition but receive additional content on topics they find interesting. The design makes use of the individual goals of visitors, by letting them compose a unique and meaningful museum visit that fits their personal goals. Because visitors have composed a museum visit themselves, the museum has the opportunity to create an optimized visiting path for each visitor, while keeping in mind both the experience of the visitor and the available capacity throughout the museum.

Environmentalists recently attracted a lot of international attention with controversial actions, including throwing food against famous paintings in art museums. Which is worth more, art or life? The fragility of art is similar to the fragility of the earth itself. But as quickly as the bunch of climate activists appeared in all the newspapers, they also disappeared from the public’s mind. The general public has become accustomed to yet another climate stunt. Some form of awareness is there, but acting on it, many people omit. Before even a slight adjustment of behaviour, our fast-paced society is already distracted by the next new soap opera, a new car or pondering about the impact of our next plane trip. Museums recognise their changing role in this society. Museums should no longer just entertain and amaze, they should from time to time be able to chafe, awaken us and urge us to change our behaviour. Topics such as sustainability, climate change and the energy transition lend themselves well to this. The urge to change a behaviour can be caused by a transformative learning experience. For example, experiencing the real-life effects of climate change in rural countries can completely change a person’s relationship with their self-world, thereby producing lasting changes in attitude and behaviour. Museon-Omniversum, a science museum, would like to research such a transformative learning experience for a new exhibit in a mobility zone of their current exhibition One Planet NOW!. Several research activities have been done to understand transformative experiences and place them in a museum context. A literature review, expert interviews, museum visits, and observations resulted in a set of 12 guide cards that can support the design of a transformative museum exhibit. Following from research, cycling as a sustainable mode of transport was chosen as an exhibit topic. Besides, the findings resulted in a transformative museum experience journey, which in turn inspired a specified design goal. Subsequently, various ideas were generated in brainstorming and creative sessions and translated into physical prototypes. Evaluation tests with these prototypes gave insights into the experiences and effects of the developed ideas. These insights resulted in the development of the final exhibit: ‘Pedalling towards sustainable urban mobility’. An exhibit which aims to let visitors explore and reflect on the mode of transport they travel with throughout the city. The interactive exhibit is a hands-on experience that introduces visitors to a city where bikes are the main mode of transport. Visitors can magically discover a hopeful future vision of a bicycle city, where an intersection has been transformed into a version without cars. They are encouraged to explore what is going on in this world. Would they want to live in a city like this? The exhibition’s connecting part deals with transport's influence on urban planning. Visitors will have the opportunity to reflect on how transport choices affect the construction of a city. Overall the exhibit successfully aims to inspire a sustainable urban mobility transformation. However, further alterations are needed to improve the design and test the impact over a longer period. Short-term design recommendations for improving the exhibit to be fully stand-alone and operational have been given. In addition, suggestions for long-term research and design activities have been made.

In 2018, both of Amsterdam’s academic hospitals(VUmc & AMC) officially merged into the Amsterdam UMC. As part of thismerger two neonatal Intensive care units (NICU) are merging as well. Thisproject aims to increase the job satisfaction of NICU nurses in thispost-merger department. TheNICU nurse A neonatal intensive care unit nurse treats premature borninfants as young as 24 weeks after the pregnancy. Besides nursing they guideparents through this emotional and unstable first phase of parenthood. Largerproblem There is a global nurse shortage and this is also noticed atboth NICU departments. Attending this issue is even more urgent now sincemergers are often associated with higher job dissatisfaction and higher staffturnover rates (Martin, 2008).  Designproblem Job satisfaction is globally considered to have a pivotalrole in nurse turnover and the quality of care for patients. (Lu, 2019). At this moment there is no active pursuit toincrease nurse job satisfaction at the Amsterdam UMC. This leads to thefollowing design problem: Howcan design thinking (empathize,define, ideate, prototype and test) be used todefine and shape future employee experiences in order to improve jobsatisfaction in a post-merger NICU department?  Design research (empathize) A NICU nurse profileof ten work values isestablished. These values are then compared to the organizations core values.Furthermore the different work cultures of both NICU groups are explored.  Design goal (define) The value ‘rewards me’is fulfilled the least well while being perceived as relatively important bythe nurses. Therefore the designgoal is: Improving the NICU nursing staff’s feeling of being rewarded for workrelated efforts in order to increase their overall job satisfaction. A future experience map (ideate) To define and shape future NICU nurse experiences, a future employee experience map is made. Promising solutions are also placed in theemployee experience map. Boost (prototype) One concept in the future experience mapis prototyped and tested. This concept is the ‘Boost’ concept which aims atimproving employees wellbeing by facilitating a short personal moment away fromall stimuli during a workday. At the VUmc the concept is prototyped. Walls andceilings are covered with blankets and a massage chair, exercise area andreading corner are created. Promising results (test) For three weeks the Boost concept is piloted in the VUmc. Compared to the zeromeasurement a small but positive increase is observed. This data combined withthe desirability of the conceptshows that the boost concept has the potential for increasing jobsatisfaction.  Recommendation Although more measurements are needed the Boost concept shows the potential toincrease job satisfaction. Many more ideas are mapped in the future experiencemap. This leads to the following final recommendation: Combine the future employee experience map with a design thinking mindset (empathize,define, ideate, prototype, test) to realize many incremental gains in nurse jobsatisfaction in order to fight the nurse shortage issue.

This projectThe aim of this graduation project was to find out how to make the Mauritshuis, an art gallery museum in the city centre of The Hague, relevant to visiting families with children. Thereby the focus was on how to engage the families as soon as they enter the permanent exhibition of the museum and make the museum more relevant to them accordingly. The Relevance by Play Framework (Vermeeren & Calvi, 2019) was taken as reference. To understand the message and experience that the Mauritshuis wants to provide to its visitors (and mainly families with children) with the help of the permanent exhibition, the content of the permanent exhibition, the management mission / vision and museum employees are consulted. Additionally the strengths and weaknesses of the current family product in use are reviewed as reference. The scope is broadened by looking at how other museums approach families with children. Parallel to getting to know the core of the Mauritshuis, research has been conducted with families, both parents and children, with the aim to understand their motivations, roles and interests before –and during a visit to museums in general, or the Mauritshuis specifically. This was achieved through a literature review, observations, questionnaires, interviews and generative sessions. The project visionThe research outcomes resulted in an interaction vision:"I want that the Mauritshuis becomes like an exciting exploration of a goldmine. Corridor systems give confidence and guidance to curious families that decide to walk autonomously through the goldmine. When gold is discovered, it can be subtracted from the mine and taken home as a reminding reward to proudly share with others." The vision was used as base while generating product ideas. Through engaging employees of the Mauritshuis in the idea generation, a concept is developed that was assumed to be relevant to both the Mauritshuis and visiting families: the Mystery Game. The Mystery GameThe Mystery game is storytelling application on an iPad, which keeps the family together while travelling through the Mauritshuis. The family is helped to immerse in the stories behind the building: they can see a reconstruction of each room of the year 1704 when inside the rooms, with the use of animations, movies and augmented reality. The present is mixed with the past and the family is challenged to find the link between them through solving a mystery in each room. A prototype has been made of this concept as proof of concept and in order to test its relevance.

An analysis of the declining use of cash within the Netherlands and the eurozone. Recommendations and a redesign are created to tackle the challenges of both a declining cash cycle and a society with limited cash use.

Museums are places where the objects displayed are on a pedestal, often quite literally. These objects are found to be of such importance to be selected and displayed for thousands of people, tourists or purists, to see. This experience of visiting an institution, viewing an almost sacred object you cannot touch, and reading the supplementary text, only goes so far. It is a long shot for trying to communicate the artefacts’ deep backstories, to the visitors. Could it be possible for this to still be achieved? By appreciating the institute’s wants, respecting the artefact, but not sacrificing depth and interaction with the artefacts. What if a novel technology, Augmented Reality, was implemented, could that create that change? This train of thought formed the conception of this project. This graduation project explored the use of Augmented Reality in relatino to Design Heritage artefacts. Ultimately for visitors to be inspired and learned from their stories. This project was in collaboration with the Henri Baudet Institute, of the Industrial Design Engineering(IDE) faculty. The institute has a collection of classic product design objects for students to learn about and be inspired by. For this project the context was set to the IDE faculty, and its students from all levels as the target group. An important other element for this project was the aim to find and strike a balance between real-world interactions and digital ones. Multiple research methods to get a better understanding of learning and AR were used. Also User studies to uncover the users' wants, needs and dreams. A iterative process of ideation, prototyping and small scale user tests were performed to effectively improve the concepts and prototypes. The final outcome is ARchive: ARchive is an interactive museum experience that brings artefacts to life in an engaging and educational manner. Through the power AR technology and visitors’ smart devices, the now normally hidden stories of these objects can be unlocked. The concept offers a multisensory experience where visitors can interact with, and learn about the artefacts in a casual way, all from devices familiar to them.

The project aims at designing an engaging art experience outside the Van Gogh Museum (VGM) for young people. The experience should achieve the design goal of triggering young people’s interest in Van Gogh and his art through experiencing the connections between his personal stories and his painting style and technique in a mixed-reality environment. Before defining this design goal, research was conducted through literature review, context and user research (Contextmapping), and existing XR products analysis. Through literature review, the factors of relevance and participation of enhancing engagement and their relation to emotional connection are found. It provides a clear objective for user research in the VGM context - figuring out the desired content of the museum for young people and how they would like to interact with the content. Specific qualities of interaction and desired content are figured out based on the needs of young people. Among all through mixed reality technology, mixed reality is selected due to its potential to enable diverse interaction and be more accessible by the target group. Based on insights gained from the research phase, the design goal and design criteria are formulated, validated, and prioritized based on the results of a questionnaire. In the ideation phase, ideas are generated and prototyped from both technological and context perspectives, which lead to three important results: Feasible design elements by MR, the understanding of the essential aspects of MR, and a structure of four phases of interaction that help build the design elements into a complete journey. A converging concept is created, tested, and discussed with participants and clients with all the insights above. The insights result in a content structure, providing a logical way of organizing content during the experience through layered information with a coherent storyline. It reduces the cognitive effort needed to process the information so that it engages young people more. Based on the structure of four phases of interaction and user test insights, the final concept is created. The interactive prototype is built with Java, a programming language. The prototype is used for the final concept evaluation. The concept is then evaluated and validated by both the field test and the control test, using observation, questionnaire, and interview combined to evaluate to what extend the design achieved the design goal and criteria. Limitations and recommendations for improvements are discussed at the end of the evaluation chapter. Overall, the design is an interactive art experience (installation) that brings the content of VGM to the public environment, approaches young people, and triggers their interest in the connection between Van Gogh’s stories and art with Mixed reality.

The aim of this graduation project is to research the current way youngsters, with a diverse migration background (age 18-30 and living in Amsterdam) experience the Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam (VGM) and to design an intervention that provides them with a relevant and enriching Van Gogh experience to thereby increase its inclusiveness. Over the last years, the VGM noticed they were not reaching a diverse group of youngsters even though our society is becoming more diverse so, to welcome everyone and be ready for the audience of the future, they felt the need to change their attitude. To create a concept that is successful and supported, the youngsters have been involved in every step of the user centred, loosely applied, Design Thinking framework. Literature shows that to change the museum into a place where inclusion is enhanced Sandell (1995) three cultural dimensions of inclusion are defined; representation (of a person’s cultural heritage), participation (opportunities in cultural production) and access (opportunities to enjoy cultural services). To gain insights on what the users need to find these three dimensions in culture, 6 interviews and 2 museum visits were carried out. It was concluded that in experiencing culture, youngsters find it important to be able to do their own meaning making, feel a personal connection and have a fun and exiting experience. Instead of the VGM feeling distant, not relevant and at times boring, which is currently the case. From these insights a new museum mindset is formulated, to help the VGM to communicate more in the ‘language’ of the youngsters. This means that their communication should focus more on identification, with Van Gogh, then adoration, communicate more evocative that informative, provide more guidance than autonomy and present themselves more boldly than conventional. In the ideation phase it emerged that the personal letters Vincent van Gogh wrote during his life to his friends and family could be a great source of inspiration for youngsters nowadays. This led to the development of the ‘Van Gogh, the other story’ concept, where youngsters with a migration background get acquainted Vincent van Gogh's personal life story in a meaningful way, find connections between his life and their own and create an artwork in cooperation with a professional artist. Based on his original letters, five modern letters have been written, and made into a booklet, with themes that are of interest to young people today. When implemented continuously, multiple exhibitions can be made with the newly made artworks and be presented in neighbourhoods like the Bijlmer or Nieuw-West, making them easy to access for everyone. This way the youngsters can tell their own story through art, something that Van Gogh did too. After testing the concept it became clear that the participants felt more connected with Vincent van Gogh, the letters provided personal insights for them and the creation of an artwork felt like an exciting adventure, showing the potential impact of the ‘Van Gogh, The other story’ concept on the tree cultural dimensions, representation, participation and access.

Nowadays, children are growing up in a highly unstable world. In our popular, shared narrative, ‘the future’ seems to have become a synonym for socioeconomic crisis and environmental disaster. In the hugely globalized and intercommunicated reality we live in, this is a story that children can hardly stay oblivious to. A European Union-wide survey showed that 1 in 10 young people between the ages of 11-17 experience mental health issues, with fear of the future being cited as one of their main worries (ChildFund Alliance et al., 2021). “What are you going to do when you are older?” The questions we ask children have become much heavier in recent times, as uncertainty renders their future more opaque than ever. This graduation project started from a very broad inquiry: how can we help children realize the power they have over what the future will be like, through a museum experience? In other words, how can we invite children to speculate about futures in a way that is empowering for them? These questions were posed by Nieuwe Instituut, the museum for architecture, design and digital culture of Rotterdam; they represent the ultimate goal of the Co-Learning Expo, which is currently in its early stages of development. This project’s goal was to provide design guidance on how to engage children in speculation about futures through an empowering, transformative museum experience. In order to do this, literature on futures, children’s development, children’s empowerment and participation in museums was reviewed, as well as case studies of cultural institutions who have co-designed exhibitions or other experiences with children. This allowed for a better understanding of the context that the Co-Learning Expo is seeking to fit into, and to position it as a co-designed participatory exhibition. To gain insight on how participation and futuring are approached in the field of design, several methodologies were looked into, such as Participatory Design, Speculative Design and Context Mapping. To truly grasp what children’s perceptions and attitudes towards the future are, participatory, generative activities were carried out with them. Additionally, parents and a teacher were interviewed, in order to get adults’ perspectives as well. The insights gained in the research phase of this project were translated into design requirements for the design of empowering museum experiences for children regarding futures. In order to fit the needs of the final users of this guidance — design agency Opperclaes and the Co-Learning department of Nieuwe Instituut — the format of these requirements was improved through three iterative cycles. The result was Designers of the Future, a flexible toolkit meant to support its users during ideation and evaluation processes for museum experiences — such as the Co-Learning Expo. Through its use, the main challenges to be addressed are brough to the table, in order to truly create an empowering experience for children. The final toolkit was evaluated with design agency Opperclaes and an expert on co-design with children, with positive results overall. Since this project was meant to be a first incursion into this line on inquiry, recommendations for future research as well as next steps are offered.

In 2014, the National Archaeological Anthropological Memory Management Foundation (NAAM) was commissioned by the Bonairean government (OLB) to realize a permanent museum exhibition on the ground floor of the Passanggrahan building. The exhibition is to be based on the (historic) city center of Kralendijk. Being that the realization of this museum is still in its beginning stages, the opportunity arose to create a proposal for said museum from an interaction designer’s perspective in cooperation with the MuseumFutures Graduation Lab of the TU Delft. The aim of this project is to design this museum from a bottom-up approach, starting with a better understanding of the Bonairean context and community. Research Objectives In exploring the realm of the “museum of the future”, it is crucial to understand the more abstract concepts like culture, heritage and relevance, because these concepts directly relate to the values of the community, which should be reflected in the values of institutions. Yet more often than not, as design engineers, the digital and the interactive take the focus of this new frontier. With this in mind, the aim of this research is to gain insights on the needs and concerns of the Bonairean community regarding cultural heritage. These insights form the basis for the design statement of a new museum concept. Research questions In line with the objective of this thesis, the following research questions have been formulated: 1. What role, regarding cultural heritage, should/could the museum play in the Bonairean community? 2. How to make cultural heritage relevant to the Bonairean youth? Sub questions: • What is cultural heritage and how do you design for it? • What do Bonaireans want and need in a museum? • What can be learned from existing heritage institutions on Bonaire? Approach Literature research as well as context observations and interviews with key figures in cultural heritage management and social events on Bonaire formed the foundation for answering the main research questions. Nina Simon’s work on participation and relevance (Simon, 2010; Simon, 2016) helped structure the approach in addressing participation and the youth aspect of this project. Additionally, other documents in legislation and policy regarding heritage management (Eilandsraad Bonaire, 2010) and cultural development (De Geus, 2016), as well as architectural views on tangible heritage (Meurs, 2016), shed light on an ethical approach to designing for cultural heritage. These insights helped formulate the problem definition and design statement that formed the base for the ideation and conceptualisation phase. As a method for evaluation of the final concept, the ‘Cards for Culture: Museum Edition’ toolkit was utilised. This gave insight into responsibilities of different stakeholders in implementing this museum concept. Concluding this report, i adress the original research objectives and give an example as to how the concept could be implemented. Throughout this project, in the research phase and the resulting final concept, the concept of a bottom-up approach was integral.

The Netherlands is one of the forerunners in the fields of international scientific research, education and innovation. Currently ,the country faces a dire problem - insufficient technologically skilled people to meet the demands of the fast growing technological development. To address this problem, the government mandated to actively encourage science among young children. Science museums play a crucial role in delivering lessons to schools, they are ideal spaces to make the maximum impact on a young mind. Thus, the idea for the Robotic and Programming lab at Museon was born. The lab is established to be at the forefront of this change and to actively introduce programming to primary school children. This project conceptualises the interactive experience of the robotic programming lab. It also formulates a framework for the experience which aids in the conceptualisation of interactive activities within the lab. These interactions are designed with an aim to encourage programming while closely considering the learning outcomes and the science concepts that children are already familiar with.

This project is in collaboration with the Green Kids’ Museum Kenya, which will be the first interactive children museum in East Africa. The museum will become a place for children of age 6 to 14 to learn, inspire and explore, with sustainability at its core. The purpose of the project is to propose an interactive design to playfully foster awareness around renewable energy at the Green Kids' Museum Kenya, in specific for children aged 9 to 11 living in the Nairobi metropolitan area. An effective and engaging way to educate children is by providing a play-based learning experience as it capitalises on the motivational abilities and engagement of play. In order to provide such an experience the target group first needs to be triggered to engage with the installation. Once the children are interested in the installation they need to be able to playfully explore, experiment and reflect on the implementation of renewable energy. After which the children will leave the installation with a sense of pride, due to the gained learning experience. To support the play-based learning journey and to ensure that an exhibition is engaging for children, 12 guidelines have been developed, based on a creative session with children, interviews with stakeholders, museum visits and literature review. Each guideline corresponds with an underlying need of children: support children with different interests, give children the feeling that they are in control, allow children to take a break to reflect on their experience, enable discovery, emphasise the feeling of fellowship, challenge the abilities of the children, provide a clear and simple introduction, allow children to take risks, trigger their senses, reflect everyday life within the installation, utilise humour and create an aesthetically pleasing experience. The guidelines formed the basis for developing the design Geotricity. Geotricity consists of a table with an interactive landscape projected on it. The challenge for the children is to provide energy to the houses on the table. To accomplish this, the children can place elements that represent renewable energy power plants. Placing an element causes the projection to change accordingly. If a power plant is placed in a correct position, the lights in the corresponding houses are turned on. Through exploration, experimentation and reflection the child will learn about the implementation of the different renewable energy power plants. Based on an evaluation test with Dutch children at the age of 10, it appears that the concept is experienced as engaging and provides children the opportunity to playfully explore and experiment with the applicability of power plants. Once they properly positioned an element and made a house light up, the children felt a sense of pride. Further research needs to be conducted to establish if the design has the same impact on the target group of children aged 9 to 11 living in the Nairobi metropolitan area and to determine whether the experience has the desired educational impact.

Experiential travel is a form of tourism in which people focus on experiencing a country, city or particular place by connecting to its history, people and culture. The Curaçao Tourist Board (CTB) is the official government entity that promotes foreign visits, tourism, for the island of Curaçao and is responsible for “the brand” Curaçao. This graduation project aims to contribute to CTB’s goal of focusing more on Experiential Travel awareness. As a designer of experiences, I will first research how the Cultural Historical museums currently hold up to that goal of creating authentic experiences. My goal, then, is to design meaningful interactions between the visitors and the island’s culture that will lead to the intended authentic experience. AnalysisMuseumsAfter visiting 15 museums, a selection was made of the 5 museums to focus on for this project. This selection was based on their potential for experiential travel, and their availability for this project. By conducting interviews with the museums staff, experts and visitors, and by observations of the staff and visitors the research goals were reached. The result is an overview of all museums, their challenges and their potential. The main challenges of these museums is a lack of resources, both financial and human. VisitorsMany useful visitor insights were collected, and these were used as a base for creating 5 personas. These personas represent different types of tourists; repeat visitors, first time day tourists, both young and old, cultural tourists and the locals, as these are also a significant group of museum visitors.  Cultural ElementsThe relevant Cultural Elements have been identified, and can be divided into 6 main categories and 8 subcategories. For this project mainly the social and cultural elements will be considered to share with the tourists, which include: Language, Religion (Spirituality), Traditions (Cultural Ecology, Food, Music & Dance), Community Life (Pop Culture, Social Behaviour, Ethnicity) Local art (Architecture) and finally History to bring it all together. As all museums have their specialization, and these elements are be a fair way to categorize the museums. Sharing the cultural elements will be the focus of the design.These insights will together facilitate idea generation. An interaction vision and a design vision were the main inspiration during the ideation phase. Brainstorming and brain writing were used as the main methods. The result is an overview of ideas that were based on the analysis, and a few scenarios.DesignTo develop a concept some basic requirements were decided on, and a main scenario was developed based on the scenarios in the ideation phase. The Curaçao Museum ExperienceThe Curaçao Museum Experience is a multi layered concept that includes both a service, and a product which together will enhance the visitors’ experience. This service has been designed as a base for every museum, with the requirement of some minor customizations per museum. The product is a part of this service to enhance the visitors’ experience. The design will extend the museum experience beyond the actual visit, to start before and go on after the visit. Visitors will get to know Curaçao through the cultural elements, and can identify these inside a museum, and between museums. The main goal is to connect museums and their collection to the cultural elements of Curaçao so the visitors know what these cultural elements are, and what the museum has to offer in each category. The product will add to the current experience, by allowing the visitor to choose their museum experience more consciously. It is also a way to bring the museums of Curaçao together.The product is the physical manifestation of the idea, and serves as a medium for richer experiences. It will improve the visitor experience, and elevate all museums to the same basic level. Involving visitors in the creation of their journey, relating the themes to their own interests and connecting cultural elements. How it worksWhen preparing for a visit, the visitor can find information about the museums in the brochure, which can be found at several locations, such as the information booth in the city, hotel lobbies and the museums. On the way to the museum the visitor will find visual cues that announce the arrival to the museum. When they arrive at the museum and when paying for a ticket the visitor could take a look at the wooden panel, as the staff member will point it out to them while sharing the usual information and code of conduct. The visitor can take the cultural element cards with them inside the museum. While walking around in the museum they will encounter items with cultural element marker stickers that have the same themes as on their cards. This way some parts of the collection can be highlighted. The information on the cards should be relevant to the collection. After the visit, there is the possibility to reflect/give feedback on the reflection sheet, which replaces the customary guest book. EvaluationThe design was tested in a simulated context as the museum are not in the same country as the test was being conducted in. The parts that were the easiest to simulate have been tested.The final design triggers excitement, especially the brochure and the cultural element panel. Instructions are a good trigger for the shyer visitors, but absolutely not necessary. The visitors are able to figure it out, but not because of the instructions.There isn’t enough time to see every aspect of every part, but because of repetition of the colors, logos and information, the message is still conveyed in other phases of the visit. The categories and colors are easily recognized through all phases if they have been seen before. The information in the form of a trivia, as it is now, is seen as being sufficient; visitors don’t mind looking up the information themselves.

The aim of this project was the design of a new exhibit for Science Centre Delft, using lifelike reproductions of historic paintings created by the research project "3D fine art reproductions". Using reproductions of paintings opens up doors to interact with paintings like never before. The main challenge was researching how the use of these reproductions of paintings can create an added value in experiencing art for the young audience of the Science Centre (7 to 12 years old), and finding a way to incorporate the research outcomes in the design of an exhibit. Experiencing art is different for everybody. Although the content of the aesthetic experience is personally dependent, a general structure of the experience can be identified (Csikzentmihalyi & Robinson, 1990). The viewer can be involved with the art on multiple dimensions: the perceptual dimension, the intellectual dimension, the emotional dimension and the conversational dimension. For an engaged aesthetic experience, it is important that the challenges of the work of art on one or more of these dimensions are in balance with the skills of the viewer. If these two are not in balance, the viewer should be facilitated in the process to enable him/her to have an engaged experience.How this facilitation should look like and on which of the dimensions of art it should focus, depends the interests and skills of the user.Research showed that because of the young audience of the Science Centre, the focus in this project should be on the perceptual dimension: facilitating the process of exploring the canvas and consciously looking at the art. This fits best with the aesthetic development of the target group and will enable the Science Centre visitor to have an aesthetic experience relevant to them (Housen, 2008). The final design of this project makes the aesthetic experience into a tangible experience, by providing the user with clear goals and tools to explore the painting. This way, an engaged aesthetic experience can arise that fits well within the Science Centre context. The design consists of three parts, combining different goals and stances.1) The first part focusses on the formal elements of art: the building blocks of an artwork. Small pieces of the painting are printed separately, for the user to find back in the painting. All search pieces are based on one of the formal elements, making the user aware of their existence.2) For the second part, flowers from the painting are printed separately. The visitors can create extra flowers onto the painting. Doing this, the user can experience how the formal elements are used, and how their actions have effect on the composition and balance of the painting.3) The third part evolves around a personal question. The painting is split into a grid, and the visitors are asked to choose and vote for their favorite piece. This question functions as a probe to look at the painting from a personal point of view. The design was evaluated in a thorough user research. The research showed that the exhibit enabled the Science Centre visitor to have an engaged aesthetic experience, in which they consciously explored the painting.