Designing for Design-after-Design in a Museum Installation
Petros Ioannidis, Anders Sundnes Løvlie · 2022
Design-after-design focuses on facilitating the re-purposing and re-design of an artefact by its users. In this article, we explore the challenges of designing for design-after-design through a research-through-design experiment set up in an architecture exhibition for a duration of three months. During those months, we aimed to facilitate the re-purposing of the design artefact by the museum visitors and use that to inform design iterations through which we redesigned the artefact. We gathered in-the-wild data about the novel uses discovered by some of the visitors, but also found that many users were confused by the undetermined nature of the initial artefact. Our research contributes by applying design-after-design in practice and reporting on design implications when developing similar open-ended experiences for museums. Specifically, we discuss implications for balancing openness and constraints in such processes, and suggest further research directions for exploring this challenge.