Service design for the heritage experience in archaeology

The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the application of service design methodology for the creation of heritage experiences in Archaeology, looking in particular at harnessing the power of co-creation for user centered experience design in community-centric cultural tourism.

Co-creation is a central aspect of a holistic service design approach and proposes to treat all stakeholders as co-creators. It offers the opportunity to engage a host community as well as a visitor community in the heritage experience and its creation.

Post-modernism proposes that knowledge is socially constructed and if we consider this to be an important insight, we may concur that knowledge construction in the heritage experience should be inclusive and socially accessible. Archaeology is an area of practice where the notion of socially constructed knowledge is examined within the discipline, but does not always translate into how archaeological knowledge and artifacts are presented to the public or cultural tourisms host communities. Artifacts and fact may potentially be presented as static knowledge without the context the knowledge was created in being examined or opened up for discussion. This limits opportunity for audience engagement and for stakeholder inclusion in the construction and communication of that knowledge and thus how the Archaeological heritage is experienced.

This paper will be looking at how service design can help create archaeological heritage experiences that explore a multi-layered narrative through co-creation and democratised strategies of engagement. Silverman (2002) noted that “archaeological tourism provides the opportunity for selective re-creation and reconstruction of the past”, but in todays interconnected age this does not sound like a strategy fit for the 21st century.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the overall relevance of service-design to a heritage experience design in archaeology and how it may offer the potential to engage new audiences in archaeological heritage through stakeholder inclusion.