Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums

Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums is filled with creative fodder for practitioners who wish to make more memorable and engaging experiences that promote a sense of presence, effectively evoke emotions, tell stories that transport them, and harness visitors’ innate playfulness.

Providing readers with a framework for understanding playful engagement, Rodley details four concepts that, when used effectively, can create a new generation of compelling visitor experiences. This book combines research and examples from the cultural and for-profit sectors with new insights from current research in psychology, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction to explore why these concepts are valuable to designers. Reflections from leading practitioners from around the globe and across the experience design spectrum provide unique insights into the current state of practice. This is augmented by examples from the author’s 30-plus years of experience developing visitor experiences in a variety of science, art, and history museums.

Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums provides practitioners with a concrete way of thinking about engagement that centers on visitors. This book will be of particular interest to professionals in museums, libraries, and archives, but will also be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage, digital humanities, and experience design.

Ed Rodley is an award-winning experience designer and a Co-Founder and Principal at The Experience Alchemists (TEA), an experience design firm serving the cultural sector and beyond. Before starting TEA, Ed was Associate Director of Integrated Media at Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, USA.