Nordic Design Research Conference 2013, Copenhagen-Malmö, www.nordes.org 1 DESIGN EXPERIMENTS WITH SOCIAL MEDIA BASED RELATIONS TO MUSEUM CONTENT IN THE CITY DAGNY STUEDAHL INTERMEDIA, UNIVERSITY OF OSLO DAGNY.STUEDAHL@INTERMEDI.UIO.NO SARAH LOWE GRAPHIC DESIGN, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSE SLOWE@UTK.EDU ABSTRACT The relationship of digital technology to museum practices is a field that continues to grow and acknowledge the potential of new development. Development that will require new understandings related to museum content travelling across contexts, participatory methods suitable to designing digital technology into museum communication and new forms of relations with visitors and citizens. In this paper we explore the use of a small‐scale prototype experiment as the basis for studying mobile social media participation in museums communicating content in the city. The methods used are drawn from critical design, in which design thinking and cultural investigation are combined to make inquiries into the role that social media can have for extending the space of museum communication INTRODUCTION Generations of emerging designers and museum personnel, well versed as both active participants and/or passive users of social media, are entering a professional environment where what can be considered a professional competency is a continually evolving discussion. The call for a realignment of ‘digital, ‘media’ and ‘design’ literacies to accommodate this new generation are many (Burdick and Willis 2009, Giovannella 2012, Prensky 2012) and for very good reasons. Designing for mobile museum communication platforms outside of the museum goes beyond design and into implications for structuring and redefining the nature of visitor experience. It also goes beyond providing a more or less attractive medium for presenting content (Macdonald 2007), into design as implications for making museum content relevant in a variety of experiences within public spaces. For purposes of this paper presented in the context of demonstrating experiments within materials, technologies, and museum content in new contexts, we will expand upon three different challenges that have arisen as valid investigative needs from observed outcomes of an initial experiment. These challenges include: content travelling across contexts, participatory methods suitable to exploring mobile social media participation, and sustainability of the media involved – all of which we feel point to new needed design literacies for addressing the advancement of mobile museum communications. We contend that this emphasis on highlighting future needs from smallscale experiments is applicable across scenarios beyond just this investigation. It should also be stated up front that this is not to imply there only to be three potential challenges to the literacies we foresee needed. Rather, that these are three of the most valuable research directions for continuing the Akerselvadigitalt project. As well as for exploration of design experiments in the digital cultural heritage field.