Participatory heritage innovation: designing dialogic sites of engagement

Abstract

Innovations in digital cultural communication for museums challenge us to develop appropriate methods for participation in curatorial processes and to rethink the role of audiences inside exhibitions. The article explores the potentials of scaffolding sites of dialogue and creative engagement through the design process and final exhibition. It draws upon experiences from an interactive exhibition project, Digital Natives, in which we combined principles from Participatory Design with issues of contemporary digital culture to explore possibilities for creating heritage innovation. We suggest three critical stages of the dialogic design process in which engagement between stakeholders, researchers, and audiences can be central to shaping and transforming future conceptions of digital cultural heritage, through process and final exhibition. In this way, we argue that a participatory design anthropological approach to digital culture can expand opportunities for heritage innovation through technological means of engagement in museums.

Keywords:

• digital cultural heritage
• innovation
• museums
• digital natives
• design anthropology
• participatory design
• dialogic engagement

Additional information

Rachel Charlotte Smith is Assistant Professor of design anthropology and interaction design at the Centre for Participatory IT, Aarhus University, Denmark. She studies how digital technologies can provide new ways of engaging audiences in cultural heritage communication, within the emerging field of design anthropology.

Ole Sejer Iversen is a Professor in child-computer interaction at the Centre for Participatory IT, Aarhus University. His research focuses on theory and practices of designing engaging interactive technologies for and with children, in the fields of Scandinavian Participatory Design and interaction design.