Appropriation and design-after-design as tools to shape playful museum installations

Over recent years, the Design Research field has been increasingly focusing on how the design of an object is affected after its deployment through the various unpredicted ways of use that occur when user appropriate it—called “design-after-design”. At the same time, that appropriation of hybrid experiences in the museum space can be challenging for institutions which are not prepare to address it through their design processes. This article presents a study that employs a research-through-design method by conducting design experiments in-the-wild. Its aim is to explore a design process which focuses on deploying an open and ambiguous object, thus support acts of design-after-design to emerge and using those acts to re-design the original object. Through the research findings, I aim to produce further knowledge, through field trials, on design processes that deal with designing for leisure and pleasure rather …