One cardinal rule of design thinking is that when seeking actionable insights, consider applying restrictions to see what happens next. For example, if a designer wants to make a new product for someone who has a broken arm, they can most effectively innovate by experiencing what it might be like to move through a day with a broken arm. The designer could temporarily immobilize themselves with a sling, by taping or binding an arm or just refusing to use it.
By restricting themselves in an authentic way, the designer can move toward empathy with the target user by experiencing just a touch of what they may be coping with. Imagine how much easier it is to brainstorm new solutions to single arm mobility when moving through that experience in an actual and personal way?
This example is not shared to diminish physical ailments or trivialize differences or abilities but rather to demonstrate that by restriction, people and organizations can often find new routes to empathy for their internal and external needs which can then open new avenues of brainstorming and innovation.
Intentional minimalism as an academic, aesthetic or functional mindset may be a useful approach to practical restriction in museum settings. Might a visitor experience team reduce their mobility, wear noise canceling headphones, and read only foreign languages for a day to try and better understand how they might innovate in museum accessibility? Could a community liaison spend a day in a different neighborhood at an unfamiliar institution or organization to imagine feeling like an outsider to envision how to make museums more welcoming to diverse populations? In these ways, restriction can breed new ideas for bringing museums to life for all visitors.
A more controversial area where reduction might be an interesting exercise in empathy is in collections development, storage and conservation. As disaster threats, insurance, storage and maintenance costs rise, museums are more frequently confronting questions of over-collected volumes of art and objects.
- What if there were no more space to buy for storage?
- What if no new art was available to buy?
- What if no capital campaign will finance a new building?
- What if a natural disaster destroyed the collection you have now?
Yes, these are extreme, exaggerated and unlikely questions. But why wait for the most extreme situation to imagine fewer collections of smaller amounts, on view more with more financial and physical security? Scholar and influencer Christine Platt’s Afrominimalist perspective suggests that acknowledging a history of over-consumption can lead to a process of strategic and surgical reduction in order to find freedom and resources in managing with less. While her writing and approach are targeted toward a consumer audience, there may be innovative cost and space-saving ideas to be found in applying her concepts to the museum space.
A reductionist lens may help directors, collections managers, and curators consider how to innovate within what they have and in partnership with others to create abundance of experience for visitors with less physical accumulation. As a bonus, for those organizations also confronting any imperial, colonial, military or looted origins of their collected masses, a reductionist or minimalist theory may offer the opportunity to proactively explore and acknowledge those histories, re-interpret and re-distribute materials, and develop a future relevance less dependent on stuff and more dependent on experiences.
Read Christine Platt’s The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living with Less ? The Afrominimalist’s Guide to Living with Less
