After a long gestation, Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums, my book on museum experience design is available at Routledge.
Here’s the official blurb:
Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums is filled with creative fodder for practitioners who wish to make more memorable and engaging experiences that promote a sense of presence, effectively evoke emotions, tell stories that transport them, and harness visitors’ innate playfulness.
Providing readers with a framework for understanding playful engagement, Rodley details four concepts that, when used effectively, can create a new generation of compelling visitor experiences. This book combines research and examples from the cultural and for‑profit sectors with new insights from current research in psychology, neuroscience, and human‑computer interaction to explore why these concepts are valuable to designers. Reflections from leading practitioners from around the globe and across the experience design spectrum provide unique insights into the current state of practice. This is augmented by examples from the author’s 30‑plus years of experience developing visitor experiences in a variety of science, art, and history museums.
Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums provides practitioners with a concrete way of thinking about engagement that centers on visitors. This book will be of particular interest to professionals in museums, libraries, and archives, but will also be essential reading for academics and students engaged in the study of museums, heritage, digital humanities, and experience design.
In addition, I also invited several friends to contribute reflections to the book, so you can get some bonus wisdom from Seb Chan, Johanna Koljonen, Linda Norris, Sarah Brin, and Sean Stewart! Like experience design, it’s takes a team!
And the reviews are starting to come in!
John H. Falk, PhD Founder and CEO of the Institute for Learning Innovation (ILI), and one of the world’s leading experts on free-choice learning, writes,
“Ed Rodley not only invites us into the “magic circle” of museum experiences, but enlightens, transports and guides us through the process of creating engaging museum visitor experience design. Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums is recommended for all professionals seeking to improve how museums support their audiences; it is a must read for those committed to making museum visits magical.”
MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman, founder of Science Gallery, Dublin, and author of Idea Colliders, writes,
“In Designing for Playful Engagement in Museums, Ed Rodley offers a rigorously grounded, practice-based framework for creating transformative visitor experiences in museums. Drawing on research from psychology, neuroscience, and human–computer interaction, as well as decades of museum work, Rodley explores how immersion, emotion, narrative, and “gameful design” can revitalize audience connection. Including valuable case studies, critical reflections, and tools for implementation, this is an essential guide for museum professionals and experience designers seeking to center human engagement in museum practice. This is a timely book which makes a serious case for making our museums more playful.”
Thinking about Museums 