Co-designing inclusive museum services extends engagement beyond physical spaces.

Why It Matters

This approach moves beyond simply digitizing content, focusing instead on creating holistic, barrier-free experiences. It highlights the potential for cultural institutions to foster new organizational cultures and audience engagement strategies by collaborating with external experts and user groups.

Key Finding

Involving a wide range of people, including those who will use the service and those who provide it, in a collaborative design process can lead to new ideas for making cultural heritage more accessible and engaging for older people with disabilities, even when they are not physically in a museum.

Key Findings

• Co-design can generate innovative service concepts that address the needs of specific user groups (older adults with disabilities).
• Effective service co-design requires a multi-stakeholder approach, integrating perspectives from users, domain experts, and service providers.
• The development of inclusive cultural experiences necessitates interventions beyond traditional contexts, involving new organizational cultures and audience engagement strategies.

Research Evidence

Aim: How can co-design processes involving diverse stakeholders lead to the development of innovative services that enhance accessibility and engagement with cultural heritage for older adults with disabilities, extending beyond the museum's physical context?

Method: Co-design workshop

Procedure: A co-design project involved museum staff, older adults with disabilities, healthcare professionals, designers, technology providers, and accessibility experts. Participants engaged in reflective and hands-on creative activities to envision future barrier-free cultural experiences and develop new service concepts.

Context: Cultural heritage institutions (museums)

Design Principle

Inclusive service design necessitates multi-stakeholder collaboration to address diverse user needs and extend engagement beyond physical limitations.

How to Apply

When designing services for specific user groups, especially those with accessibility needs, convene workshops with representatives from the target audience, relevant professionals (e.g., healthcare providers), and technology/service providers to co-create solutions.

Limitations

The specific context of museums might limit generalizability to other service sectors without adaptation. The long-term impact and scalability of the developed services were not fully assessed within this project.

Student Guide (IB Design Technology)

Simple Explanation: When you design something for people, especially older people or those with disabilities, it's best to ask them and other experts what they need and want. This can help you create services that work well for them, even if they can't visit the place in person.

Why This Matters: This research shows that designing for specific groups, like older adults with disabilities, requires more than just making a product. It involves thinking about the whole experience and how to make it accessible everywhere, not just in one place.

Critical Thinking: To what extent can the principles of service co-design for cultural heritage be generalized to other service sectors, and what adaptations might be necessary?

IA-Ready Paragraph: The co-design approach, as demonstrated by Recupero et al. (2023), emphasizes the value of involving diverse stakeholders, including end-users and domain experts, in the development of inclusive services. This methodology can lead to innovative solutions that extend beyond traditional service contexts, enhancing accessibility and engagement for specific user groups.

Project Tips

• Clearly define the target user group and their specific needs.
• Identify and recruit a diverse range of stakeholders for your co-design activities.
• Use a variety of creative methods to encourage participation and idea generation.

How to Use in IA

• Reference this study when discussing the importance of user involvement and stakeholder collaboration in your design process, particularly for inclusive design projects.

Examiner Tips

• Ensure your co-design process is well-documented, showing clear evidence of user input and how it influenced design decisions.

Independent Variable: ["Involvement of diverse stakeholders in co-design"]

Dependent Variable: ["Development of innovative, accessible services","Extension of engagement beyond physical context"]

Controlled Variables: ["Specific user group (older adults with disabilities)","Context (cultural heritage institutions)"]

Strengths

• Employs a participatory design approach, directly involving end-users.
• Addresses a relevant societal need for inclusivity in cultural access.

Critical Questions

• How were the needs of older adults with different types of disabilities prioritized and addressed?
• What were the key challenges in integrating the perspectives of diverse stakeholders, and how were they overcome?

Extended Essay Application

• An Extended Essay could explore the application of co-design principles to develop a service that makes a specific local historical site more accessible to elderly residents with mobility issues, documenting the co-design process and the resulting service proposal.

Source

Service co-design to envision the transformation of museums · 2023 · 10.21606/iasdr.2023.426