Museum Thinking, a people centric way to strategic museum designing

Design is the foundation of any product, space, or experience, including that of a museum.

Museum Thinking represents an extremely innovative approach to the design of public museum spaces or corporate museums, theorized by the Marketing Toys SRL Società Benefit team during the setup of META\MAR 2025, the temporary museum created for the Regional Archaeological Museum of the Aosta Valley (MAR).

Designing something for people is not simply a sophisticated way to enhance the visitor's experience during the visit, but represents a design, museological, and communicative approach that involves the visitor and user in the experimentation and information gathering phase, which will be used for the creation or reorganization of a museum space.

The museum thinking framework is based on the use of design thinking and represents a tool for all those who need to design museum experiences, installations, and corporate museums.
The framework takes into account various aspects: from museology, architecture, marketing, to communication. But above all, it places the visitor and local communities at the center of museum design.

MUSEUM DESIGN FRAMEWORK
The framework aims to guide the design by considering the experience that the visitor will have, the depth and detail with which they will choose to explore, and the time they have available.

The visitor's experience will enrich the museum's experience spaces, which in turn will influence the experience and perception of other visitors.

The underlying assumption of the framework is that the experience within the museum can be conducted vertically and touch various levels of engagement, information, and perception: metaphors, macro-concepts, suggestions of sounds and colors, as well as meticulously reported historical or technical details, all find their place in this representation within the museum spaces and are available to the visitor.

Starting from this assumption, it is essential to navigate this type of experience, which is not only amplified but also fluid, cross-media, and omnichannel. A holistic museum experience.

These assumptions will allow various disciplines and professionals to work in unison and cross-pollinate each other.

The goal of this approach is to create future-proof museum spaces, designed with and for the present visitor, but especially for the visitor of the future. It is essential to carefully choose the lens through which this type of work is approached, allowing not only the creation of beautiful and important spaces but also spaces and places that have meaning.

Design Thinking can be applied to a wide range of contexts, from products and services to business strategies and public policies.

There are different methodologies for Design Thinking, but they all share some key phases:

• Empathize: Deeply understand users' needs, expectations, and motivations;
• Define: Clearly define the problem to be solved;
• Ideate: Generate a wide range of ideas to solve the problem;
• Prototype: Create prototypes of ideas to test with users;
• Test: Test the prototypes with users and gather feedback;
• Implement: Implement the best solution;
• Learn: Learn from experience and improve the process for the future.

Design Thinking is a powerful tool that can help organizations innovate and create value for their users.

Defining work frameworks serves to establish boundaries within which to ideate and design, but most importantly, it serves to create a common space for dialogue: sharing tools, definitions, and horizons allows work groups, professionals, clients, and consultants to speak the same language and generate ideas more quickly.

This tool is not meant to be a limitation or constraint on design but rather an aid and support, and should be used as such.

Born from the experience of META\MAR 2025, the transitional exhibition of MAR - Regional Archaeological Museum of Valle d'Aosta - was entirely designed by Marketing Toys SRL Benefit Corporation to support the involvement of various professional figures in the work group: creatives, museum consultants, design thinking experts, architects, and of course the client.

Design is not just about design, architecture, or marketing. Design is about users and their overall experience in relation to the design, architecture, and marketing of a product.

The people-centric perspective represents the only constraint that is made to focus on the ways in which and through which museum visitors will interact with spaces, objects, and the city.

The biggest challenge is not building beautiful museum spaces, but designing experiences that are tailored to present and future visitors.