Digital Design (Specialism)

This module explores the approaches and theories that can help museums deliver successful digital experiences – and to build their digital design confidence. The aim is to provide you with not only a thoughtful conceptual framework in which to think about designing digital products in museums today, but some practical tools to help you to get on and initiate this production.

On successful completion of the module, you should be able to: outline and research further the key trajectories and characteristics in the development of digital technologies in society at large, and how these relate to the design choices of museums; recognize and appraise fundamental concepts around user-centred design, and its applicability in the context of digital technology and museums; discuss and apply practices of inclusive design and relate these to the ethical and legal expectations of digital accessibility within the museum sector; identify and appropriately use elements of proven project management, production processes, and digital design methodologies that can support the development of inclusive digital experiences and provision in museums; and conceive, communicate, and critique in a professionally appropriate way approaches to developing digital experiences for museum settings.

Interactive lectures provide the means to explore some of the fundamental principles that govern design in the museum – specifically the necessity of 'inclusive design', and building fairly for everyone. In-class seminar discussion is used to confront the biases (ableist and excluding) that can exist within the digital infrastructures and practices of museums. Building on these concepts, a series of workshop activities are used to consider how to design digital content with confidence. This includes the contributions of visiting practitioners, whose in-service experience provides the means to consider the realities of how the commissioning and production process works today within the sector. Site-visits to museums and/or design agencies are then the opportunity to see and critique these approaches to inclusive digital design in-situ, with input and testimony from the teams that have made those experiences. And a week-long studio ‘design sprint’, in the final week of the module, will enable you to bring together the concepts, frameworks, methods, and tools from the module, and apply to a real-world design challenge with a real museum sector client.