Inclusion and accessibility
Designing a more inclusive museum experience
With Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and DEUS
Graduation Project
Individual | 7 months | 2021
Client
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Process
Participatory design | Desing Methaphor | Prototyping
Outcome
Strategic service concept | Prototype | Inclusive design principles
Challenge
The inclusion blind spot within the museum sector.
Have you ever wandered around a museum feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to look or how to connect with art in a personal way? Well, you are not alone.
The current relationship between museums and their audiences is very hierarchical, much like one-way traffic. Visitors feel like they have to be art experts to understand what art is about, or to have an opinion or idea about it. There is a lack of guidance. And, for many people, the entire experience, feels elitist and like art or the museum is too difficult to access. This lack of inclusivity is a fundamental problem for museums, as they have the responsibility to speak and belong to us all.
Universal visitors’ needs as a starting point
When designing for inclusion I would always advocate finding out what people might have in common, what connects them and looking out for universal needs, as opposed to separating groups of people to fit simplified personas. This is also why my user research was focused on defining such universal needs, to be used as a starting point for my design. I derived these needs through qualitative interviews, using sensitizing booklets as support.
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Need for freedom and space for personal interpretation
Need for accessible self-inclusion
Need for ability to shape your own experience based on intrinsic interests and preferences
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Need to have meaningful and insightful experiences
Need for responsibility and opportunities to do good
Need to become aware, involved, connected and touched by engaging stories
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Need to be surprised and inspired by new thoughts and perspectives
Need to be challenged and triggered to be curious
Need for personal development / growth
Symbiosis as a design metaphor
Based on my research results, I decided to focus on improving the relationship between museums and visitors. Steering towards a mutually symbiotic relationship, where both parties are able to benefit - just like within coral reefs.
Corals provide fish with shelter and protection from predators, and simultaneously the fish help the reef by eating seaweed, exposing them to the sunlight they need to survive. Now, museums are the coral. They have the ability to provide inspiration, knowledge and experiences, allowing people (the fish) to unwind, learn, connect, and develop themselves. And the visitors (as the fish) help the museum, by sharing their needs and concerns, as free, active and exploring participants. That way, museums can learn from their audiences and create experiences that are more relevant, engaging and inclusive. So, they both benefit.
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“How can we stimulate and facilitate a mutual symbiotic relationship between museums and the public, to help museums become more inclusive and create more integrated inclusive cultural experiences?”
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“To design a service concept (WHAT), for museums that are committed to become more inclusive (WHO), that gives them guidance in building a mutual symbiotic relationship with the public (HOW), which will allow them to become more inclusive and create more integrated inclusive cultural experiences (WHY).”
Participatory concept development
Inspiration — Ideation — Experimentation — Observation
The journey from the metaphor to the final design was a very iterative, intuitive, and loosely structured process. I was in a natural rhythm of diverging and converging together with domain experts and museum visitors. This process involved a lot of brainstorming, experimentation, and observations in and around museums. As a result of this process, interaction principles for the final design were formulated. These principles describe the most important ‘characteristics’, or ‘personality traits’ that the final design should entail.
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Collaborative. The service allows museums and visitors to work together. Both parties are able to send and receive information, back and forth. They both give, take, and benefit. This principle stands against the notion that museums are only sending information as one-way traffic.
Adaptive. As the service aims to boost a mutual symbiotic relationship for the long term, the service should be adaptive to changes. It takes time to make a strong connection and relationships are dynamic by nature. Society changes constantly, as will people and museums, and therefore, so should the service.
Positive. To sustain any mutually beneficial relationship, it should always be clear for each party what positive benefits they gain from the partnership. The service should therefore always aim to keep forward momentum, learn from feedback, and elevate the users’ experiences.
Innovative. The service should spark curiosity, inspiration, and wonder. This innovative element is important to keep the relationship stimulating, triggering, and interesting. Therefore, the design should remain fresh, challenging, and insightful to both visitors and museums.
Assertive. Finally, to cultivate trust and inclusion it is important for the service to be assertive in terms of its communication. It should make everyone feel heard and respected, without being passive, aggressive, or biased. Whenever views or perspectives are conflicting in a harmful way, all views should be addressed and listened to, while advocating for an inclusive, safe, and respectful environment.
Trigger cards experiment. Exploring ways to support people's own line of thinking.
Art as a conversation starter. Helping people to make art personal, engaging, and inspiring
Not knowing where to look. Engaging with art based on visual appearance.
Someone taking time to really digest art in a personal way.
Digesting art is not self-explanatory and can really be exhausting.
Two men taking a step back to gain perspective.
Visitors' ability to leave their reactions to a slavery exhibition
Willingness to contribute. Curiosity towards other people's opinions.
Reactions can vary from 1 word to long texts
Some visitors also argued that this additional experience would likely give them a more meaningful and long-term connection to their museum experience.
From sarcastic statements to deeply personal remarks.
Building on each others' reactions
'Art as Therapy' initiative as a source of inspiration. An initiative curated by Alain Button and John Armstrong (Botton, 2014)
Critique on the initiative: Some ought the post-its to be too intrusive, disrespectful to the art, and undermining the expert view on the pieces themselves.
Trigger people to think about what art can do with them, from a therapeutic perspective, and what it can mean. Art is not solely about sending stories.
Thomas Jefferson's statue, from the University of Virginia, was labelled as 'racist', 'rapist', 'slaveholder' and 'hypocrite'.
An example of how people's public responses can also trigger interesting debates and critiques.
Example of how sticky notes (left by visitors) were used in museums before - in the physical space.
Sticky notes as a conversational way to interact and engage with each other.
Outcome
Habitat - Sparking curious minds at the museum
The final creation that came out of the design process was Habitat. Habitat is a conceptual museum platform that stimulates visitors’ curiosity in a non-intrusive way and simultaneously allows museums to connect and learn from their audiences.
Through the platform, visitors are being prompted with ‘trigger cards’ that contain sparking questions and a bit of context related to artworks. Then, based on these trigger cards, visitors can respond, interact, and share ideas in a conversational way, using augmented sticky notes.
This helps visitors to have a more personal, accessible, and inspiring experience while being able to explore freely and autonomously. And, at the same time, it allows museums to connect and learn from their visitors in a continuous, and mutually beneficial way. Thus, I believe this design can pave the way to a more symbiotic relationship.
A little demo
Trigger card examples
Validation prototype and expert evaluations
In the last phase, I used a prototype website to validate the concept with visitors. Due to COVID restrictions, this way the easiest way to generate feedback on the final design, as I could either execute the tests online or in person. In addition, I also evaluated the final concept with different domain experts (design, technology, museums, and inclusion). From these activities, my final recommendations were derived.
The most important recommendations being:
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Testing what works best in practice and enabling a smooth execution.
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Exploring how needs can be fulfilled in different ways. So, experimenting with more diverse people, trigger questions, use-cases, features and functionalities.
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Exploring possible collaborations, business models, moderation methods, and ways to analyse visitors’ insights.
Something I learned …
Never lose your student attitude
As a student, you are meant to make mistakes, learn from them, be curious, and follow your intuition to find your strengths, interests, and identity. And, this project, in particular, being my final project as a student, made me realise that I never want to lose my student attitude.
I truly believe that this curious and explorative attitude will make me a better designer, as it will allow me to be less restrictive when it comes to creativity, be more sensitive to learn, and be more open-minded to different perspectives, people and contexts.