TY - CHAP

T1 - Complexities of collaborating: Understanding and managing differences in collaborative design of museum communication

AU - Knudsen, Line Vestergaard

AU - Olesen, Anne Rørbæk

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - This chapter deals with the concept of collaborative design and argues for the importance of a detailed analytical attention to the complexities of collaborating across different stakeholders when researching and managing the design of museum communication. Collaboration is a term often used in the literature on designing museum communication and there are numerous accounts of the potentials of collaboration in the museum context. Thus, collaboration is a necessary activity fordeveloping communication that adheres to an increasingly complex media usage intoday's museum world. However, the focus is often on overall perspectives andoutcomes, rather than on how collaboration is actually practiced as a complex workprocess across various stakeholders. In this chapter, we give an overview of studies ofpotentials and challenges of collaborative design across dissimilar constellations ofcollaboration and we put emphasis on differences as a particularly important factor.Inspired by perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS), we giveexamples to show how various approaches to complexity can be used to investigatedifferences in collaborative design processes. Finally, we discuss how the advocatedapproach can introduce new directions to both research and management ofcollaborative design of museum communication.

AB - This chapter deals with the concept of collaborative design and argues for the importance of a detailed analytical attention to the complexities of collaborating across different stakeholders when researching and managing the design of museum communication. Collaboration is a term often used in the literature on designing museum communication and there are numerous accounts of the potentials of collaboration in the museum context. Thus, collaboration is a necessary activity fordeveloping communication that adheres to an increasingly complex media usage intoday's museum world. However, the focus is often on overall perspectives andoutcomes, rather than on how collaboration is actually practiced as a complex workprocess across various stakeholders. In this chapter, we give an overview of studies ofpotentials and challenges of collaborative design across dissimilar constellations ofcollaboration and we put emphasis on differences as a particularly important factor.Inspired by perspectives from Science and Technology Studies (STS), we giveexamples to show how various approaches to complexity can be used to investigatedifferences in collaborative design processes. Finally, we discuss how the advocatedapproach can introduce new directions to both research and management ofcollaborative design of museum communication.

KW - Collaborative design

KW - Museum communication

KW - Complexity

KW - Co-design

KW - STS

KW - Situational analysis

KW - Partial connections

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781138676305

BT - The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication

PB - Routledge

ER -