Museums and Design Practices (Critical Perspectives on Museums and Digital Technology)

Museums and Design Practices explores the increasingly critical role that design is playing in museums by focusing on how human-centred design approaches are being embraced and incorporated into their work practices.

This book advances “design-as-practice” as a way to acknowledge the technosocial dimension of the working culture of cultural organisations. It reveals how designing is a situated phenomenon that enables museums and galleries to respond in a digitally mature way to emerging contexts and challenges of digital transformation. The original thesis forwarded by the authors is reinforced by reflections shared by leading museum practitioners and designers on the complex and multifaceted nature of human-centred practices found in museums and the various ways they function within their organisational working cultures. The infusion of design into all levels of museum practice demonstrates the capacity to transform how museums approach visitor experience, inclusive collaboration, and knowledge sharing in order to build resilience in the face of change and respond to the ‘wicked problems’ confronting cultural organisations today.

Museums and Design Practices is for students and researchers as well as museum practitioners – especially those keen to understand emerging relationships that are forming between digital technology, design and the cultural work of museums. It will also be of interest to researchers and students working in the fields of design, digital culture, and museum studies.

Marco Mason is an associate professor in the School of Design at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, and a researcher specialising in design research for digital cultural heritage.

Vince Dziekan is a senior academic and practitioner-researcher at Monash Art Design and Architecture (MADA), Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellowship with the Institute for Digital Culture, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK.