Designing for emergent interactions. Strategies for encouraging emergent user behaviour & serendipitous research findings

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss emergent interactions as a design strategy in the context of cultural museum exhibitions, and how we can use these strategies to be more open to serendipitous findings in design research. We propose that emergent narratives can be transferred to the design of interactive exhibitions, and thereby removing the constraints and open use situations for more personalized, and potentially structure-breaking user experiences. Whereas much research in accidental discoveries in design focus on discovery in the design process, we propose the same accidental discoveries might be transferred as design strategies aimed at the end-users themselves making emergent interactions that can inspire serendipitous discoveries in research and design. As such, we ask the research question if we can leverage serendipitous findings from the design process to create the potential for emergent interactions for the user?

How to design for exploration through emergent narratives

“…Aylett (1999) challenges different narrative approaches to understand how far the predetermined nature of narratives can be relaxed by approaching the behaviour of emergence narratives as bottom-up experiences that happen through the interactions between essential, but simple, components in virtual environments. Based on Aylett (1999Aylett ( , 2000, Swartjes (2010), and Madsen and Vistisen (2019), we point to four main characteristics of emergent narratives and discuss them in the context of digitally augmented exhibition design. The aim is to explore how emergent narratives and the idea of open world building can improve the exploration potential of the museum experience.…”