Exchanging Expertise across Cultures and Time: Participatory Design Approaches for Creating Community Museums

Abstract

This paper presents a case study where participatory design practices were used to design a cultural museum and inaugural exhibition with designers from an Australian university and the Kelabit community in the Highlands of Borneo. We draw on experiences from fieldtrips, across a five-year period, investigating the exchange of expertise between participants. The findings show a shift in roles when sharing expertise throughout our participatory design process. Participants experienced a lack of clarity and a sense of discomfort while participating in the design of the museum resulting in the need to continually negotiate leadership of the project. The designers discovered their role was to facilitate intangible conversations into tangible outcomes, where participatory design tools reshaped conversations rather than designed final artefacts. We argue that when exchanging expertise across cultures in participatory design, participant roles become organic and ambiguous.

Keywords:

• participatory design
• co-design
• cultural heritage
• museum
• user participation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Simone Taffe

Simone Taffe is Professor in Communication Design and School Research Director at Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. Taffe lectures in the branding and participatory design. For ten years, Taffe has tailored problem-based learning to suit design students, across all levels and capabilities, which has led to university-wide outstanding teacher recognition, and a 2017 Australian Award for Teaching Excellence (AAUT). Taffe's research addresses co-design and end-user participation in the design process.

Meghan Kelly

Dr Meghan Kelly is a communication designer who has worked on high profile campaigns in industry. Kelly is the Associate Head of School (Teaching and Learning) and senior lecturer in Communication Design at Deakin University. Kelly’s research interests explore identity creation and representation in cross-cultural contexts, and the process to achieve respectful, culturally owned outcomes in professional design practice. Kelly worked with Dr Kennedy co-authoring the Australian Indigenous Design Charter (winner of a Premier Design Award 2018) and the International Indigenous Design Charter (winner of the Good Design Award (Indigenous Design) 2018).