A Design Thinking Approach for Museum Institutions

In these recent years, museum institutions are facing challenges such as deepening diversity among audiences and within the workforce, shifting authority and keeping pace with the creation of a digital offering to be provided in the new shared economy. Additionally, museums cannot just deliver knowledge as information anymore. They are forced to seek to be relevant and meaningful for the audiences and the society. Thus, a visitor-centered approach needs to be developed. The design thinking framework can help museum professionals to face the challenges they handle in today’s world. Indeed, this approach is focused on people and not on a specific product or service. The goal is to understand the needs of customers, their wishes and, based on this information, find the best solution to respond to the type of problem identified or the strategy to be developed. For this reason, the ratio of this discipline provides that people are stimulated to find alternative, creative, and innovative solutions designed and built on the reality of the facts and not dictated by instinct. The aim of this chapter is to investigate the characteristics of the design thinking approach and to analyze if this framework is suitable for museum institutions.