Co-Designing Digital Museum Communication: An Exploration of Digital Museum Communication as it Emerges in Collaborative Design Interaction between Museum Staff and Digital Designers

The aim of this thesis is to explore how digital museum communication emerges in collaborative design interaction between museum staff and digital designers. To do so, the thesis presents, analyses and interprets data material constructed using ethnographic methods to follow collaborative design interaction for more than 1.5 years in two Danish cases, at an art museum and at a cultural heritage museum. This material is further complemented by a small number of interviews from other supplementary cases. The thesis contributes with visualisations, conclusions and suggestions in relation to the involvement of digital designers, the understanding of digital museum communication and the negotiation and co-design of digital museum communication in collaborative design processes. Overall, the thesis stresses the importance of focusing on process over product when developing digital museum communication. To sustain this conclusion, funding bodies supporting digital museum communication are encouraged to grant money on the basis of process rather than product specifications and to increasingly support deep levels of co-design. In a similar vein, it is suggested that to avoid a simplistic treatment and understanding of digital museum communication, museum research should direct more attention to how digital museum communication is practically produced behind the scenes of museums. In addition to these museum-oriented contributions, the thesis adds to methodology by proposing and exemplifying expansions to the visual mapping techniques that are central to the analytical approach of ‘situational analysis’ (Clarke, 2005). Thus, a ‘temporal situational analysis’ is suggested, pushing situational analysis to more fully engage with emergence and temporal complexity. Also, the thesis contributes theoretically by visually adapting Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of ‘centripetal forces’ and ‘centrifugal forces’ to interpret positional emergence and by expanding on theory of ‘boundary negotiating artifacts’ (Lee, 2004) and ‘boundary objects’ (Star & Griesemer, 1989).