The Museum as Digital Storyteller: Collaborative Participatory Creation of Interactive Digital Experiences

Digital storytelling is one resource museums have in hand for enriching their offer to audiences and society at large. But how is the museum to author digital storytelling experiences that cater to various needs while maintaining scientific integrity? In this paper, we report on a series of experiences involving the creation of several interactive rich-media museum stories. These digital stories were authored by experts who collaborated in numerous intensive, hands-on participatory design workshops held at high-profile cultural sites: the Acropolis Museum in Greece, the archaeological site of Çatalhöyük in Turkey, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. We present the story-authoring methodology and discuss the lessons learned regarding collaborative authoring of museum stories. We conclude with the potential impact this authoring process may have at the institutional level