The activity in question wasn’t directly a sporting event either, but rather as part of the Culture and Education Programme of the Youth Olympic Games a chance for all the young Singaporean primary school kids who, having just watched either Taekwondo or Wrestling could then come and take part in some coaching in either of those sports – most likely for the first time ever in Singapore. Alongside these activities is also a museum showcasing replica torches from previous Olympics and explaining a little bit of the history and values of the Games. This museum, situated as it is in the International Conference Centre in Singapore, is accessible to members of the public who happen to be passing or who might be visiting the adjacent shopping centre. I’m not aware of this sort of thing being integral to the experience of previous Games but it strikes me as something both so brilliant, and in fact so obvious, that any host Olympic city in future, serious about public engagement and ensuring a legacy for the Games, should consider it mandatory at every venue.

Indeed, I think that given that all the athletes from these competitions will be staying in Singapore for the duration of The Games, it would be great to try and negotiate a situation in future where a few of them, or perhaps all of them, devoted a couple of hours post-competition to come and take part in these coaching activities. This would, I think, be a mutually beneficial situation for them at such a young age to get a taste of coaching others, promoting sport and like some of the other Culture and Education activities such as Community Drumming – serve as an introduction to them of getting involved in community work and social development through sport.

Over the past week of the inaugural Youth Olympic Games there have been many highlights and the final week will doubtless contain many more. But for me, seeing this activity and witnessing the potential for activities such as these to become part of the future of the Olympic Movement is as exciting as witnessing the young sports people who in London 2012 and Rio 2016 will come to embody it.

Other Insights...

• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• June 13th, 2009 -- Just do it; why in design actions speak louder than thoughts. (8)
• January 3rd, 2010 -- Introduction to the Fundamentals of Motivation (10)
• April 14th, 2010 -- Visualising Performance; What can Designers and Olympians learn from each other? (0)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (1)
• December 2nd, 2009 -- Five Minutes of Fame at the Nordic Service Design Conference Dinner (0)
• October 4th, 2009 -- Designing Design Research and Generating Momentum (1)
• August 12th, 2010 -- We’re in the Village People! (1)
• June 22nd, 2009 -- Design for Change ¦ Understanding the technological capabilities (0)
• May 17th, 2009 -- Systems That Encourage You To Think You Can (1)

The institution maintains and always seeks to assert its didactic, aesthetic or intellectual superiority on the user, because ultimately that is its business, in the industrial era sense of the word. If it failed to do so effectively people might not return…

Musee Beaux Arts - Brussels - cc John & Mel Kots - Flickr

My own interviews and conversations with visitors to museums and exhibitions in the past year as part of my work on the Ergonomics Real Design Project seems to indicate that more often than not this isn’t a problem. In other words, it is exactly this superiority or dominance of the institution over the individual that attracts people to come and visit the museum. People come to appreciate the superior knowledge, history, ability or experience the museum celebrates.

Anecdotally, I have also observed the almost reverential manner in which many visitors approach the museum, almost as if it was a sort of pilgrimage or chance to surround oneself in higher level knowledge and understanding without any real wish, belief or ambition to participate in the creation of that knowledge or understanding. Visiting an art gallery for example, to observe and appreciate art but not with the aim of understanding how to paint, simply just to be closer to the product of ‘those that can’.

This too happens in design, people buy artefacts or “follow” design and designers with a reverential or ecclesiastical fervour – surrounding themselves and ‘enhancing’ their experience of life with the beauty, satisfaction and the enhanced function afforded by good design. One need only look as far as ‘Apple Fanboys’ or early adopters of technology to see examples of this behaviour.

Whilst this is perhaps a fundamental and arguably necessary facet of organismic human behaviour, my own recent exploration of Participatory Methods is with a view to questioning whether such an imbalance in the roles of institution and visitor, or in the case of design, designer and user are in the long term sustainable?

Are these new participatory ways of business going to have a better impact on human and environmental equality than the established industrial era way of doing business?

It strikes me that this situation of the museum being more dominant than the user breeds either a dependency or a ‘learned helplessness’ in the visitor towards the museum. How much are they internalising or questioning the value of the artefacts they are presented with? The same is true in relation to users of products, how well are their capabilities being supported? Should people not be left feeling empowered with rather than dependent on the products or services they use or consume?

Taken to it’s extreme and in relation to the museum again, this potentially results in people feeling like they can’t learn how to paint because, they aren’t good enough because of a culture where only ‘genius painters’ are celebrated or where people feel they can’t impact on the environment because they feel insignificant and unempowered. This is also something of an individual trait that I discussed recently in relation to whether or not you possess an entity or incremental world view. But it can also be argued that this ‘learned helpless’ or entity world view is simply a product of unfulfilled psychological needs.

Nina’s Museum 2.0 blog and forthcoming book ask, can increased user participation and empowerment be injected into the established service that the museum provides?

Many service designers have asked the same question of design recently. Service designers have also looked to more holistic metrics of ROI, such as Livework’s use of Triple Bottom Line in their work with Streetcar, to advocate for and validate these more user-centric methods and egalitarian metrics of business success. I believe that given how many museums already have established education and ‘community outreach and involvement’ programmes the transition to a genuinely participatory museum culture is possible.

What it might require however, is the same paradigm product to service shift (i.e. entity to incremental or iterative mindset) that is occurring in the industrial design community. From my perspective that requires designers and design methods that prioritise and campaign for the equality of stakeholders – treating both institution and visitor, and designer and user equally.

This is also something I talked about a couple of weeks ago in response to a recent post and discussion on Social Customer Relationship Management (SCRM) instigated by Wim Rampen.

What do you think? Can users and organisations be treated as equal stakeholders in the design process?

What methods will support such a design process?

Why do you go to museums, is it to revere or to learn?

Other Relevant Posts...

• December 3rd, 2009 -- Managing Motivation (0)
• November 30th, 2009 -- Motivational Design Framework v.0.1 (2)
• October 30th, 2009 -- Design for Self-Service – A motivational psychology perspective (1)
• October 29th, 2009 -- Theories of Planned Behaviour (1)
• October 28th, 2009 -- User Needs are Outdated, We Should Be Designing User Goals… (1)
• October 4th, 2009 -- Designing Design Research and Generating Momentum (1)
• October 1st, 2009 -- Framework of Motivated Behaviour (0)
• September 21st, 2009 -- Motivational Design Personas (9)
• September 16th, 2009 -- More on Authenticity (0)
• September 14th, 2009 -- The Lego Universe – Inspiring Designers? (1)