NDF25 PROGRAMME

This workshop will explore ways to make creative digital experiences better and faster through iteration, feedback and trust. 

Development processes can sometimes feel difficult and slow. We consider what a fast, inclusive, positive process looks like, where various stakeholders are brought into the room together and prototyping is done at the earliest stages possible.

Creating meaningful and engaging digital content can also feel like a bit of alchemy. No-code solutions to app technology offer content creators the flexibility to change content and structures quickly using simple interfaces, and are useful tools that can support creativity and iterative making processes.

The recent collaboration between PickPath and Te Papa provided a unique opportunity to experiment with a rapid and iterative approach to weaving deeper layers of storytelling to the existing of Te Papa’s much-loved Te Taiao | Nature exhibition. Key collaborators on that project, Ralph Upton and Joel Baxendale (PickPath) and Dan Parke (Te Papa) will offer reflections on that process, the challenges and what worked well, and present learnings that can be taken forward and applied elsewhere.

This is especially relevant for organisations where new interpretations and formats (including gamification) are being used to serve different visitor segments, and can be applied beyond the GLAM sector, in areas such as placemaking and tourism.

Participants will:

• Be introduced to an iterative, collaborative approach to digital experience design.

• Gain insights into how to bring creative energy to the development process from experienced  collaborative makers.

• Examine good models for how you balance investment from stakeholders with independence and creative freedom from a small group.

• Explore different approaches to content creation in terms of devising methodologies, narrative voice, humour, working with space and architecture, and constructing journeys. 

• Examine case studies of rapid creative development of digital products in GLAM spaces.

• Discuss their own visions for creative digital projects and potential processes.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Joel Baxendale is a founder of PickPath and its Director of Product. He is also the Creative Director of Binge Culture, a contemporary theatre company based in Pōneke, where the concept for PickPath first originated. Across all areas of product development, experience design and his artistic practice he is focussed on new presentation forms and utilising collaborative devising processes, with an ongoing interest in activating the audience and game mechanics. He is a strong believer in exploring creative uses of simple digital technologies to deliver surprising and effective results.

Dan Parke is an Exhibition Experience Developer at Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand. She’s responsible for creative concept development for exhibitions and oversight of interpretive approaches with an emphasis on immersive storytelling and interactivity. With a background in biological science, Māori studies, secondary education, and science communication; Dan explores new and creative ways to make impactful connections to manuhiri via the lens of constructivism and participatory engagement.

Ralph Upton is an experience developer and performance maker, and a founding member of Binge Culture. During his time at Te Papa he contributed to a wide range of physical and digital elements for Te Papa’s Bug Lab and Te Taiao | Nature exhibitions, as well as several audio guides. As the company’s partnerships manager he has made wide use of PickPath’s Creator Studio, and led the development of Te Huanui a Māui | The Path of Māui experience.

Join Dave Patten, a leading expert in digital museum experiences with over 40 years experience at the Science Museum Group (UK), for an interactive workshop on the full lifecycle of digital exhibits. From defining audiences, design approaches, brief writing  to evaluation, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning, this session will provide a practical framework for developing engaging and digital experiences in museums.

Designed for professionals in the GLAM sector working in digital, exhibition, and experience design, this workshop will explore best practices for integrating digital elements into exhibitions, balancing innovation with long-term viability, and ensuring meaningful visitor engagement. Participants will gain insights into successful design methodologies, real-world case studies, and strategies for ongoing maintenance and adaptation in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Whether you're planning your first digital exhibit or looking to refine your approach, this workshop offers invaluable expertise and hands-on learning to help you create impactful and enduring digital experiences.

ABOUT DAVE

Dave Patten has recently (June 2024) retired as Head of New Media at The Science Museum Group, UK, where his role included managing all aspects of new media and AV, from conceptual design, prototyping and production to project managing external developers and production companies. He has a background in electronics and computer science, and  worked at the Science Museum nearly 40 years, developing exhibitions and leading development teams. He developed the technical systems for the Science Museum’s Wellcome Wing and Dana Centre, which opened in 2000 and 2004 respectively. 

Recent work includes Web Lab, the multi-award winning collaboration with Google, Engineering Your Future, an interactive exhibition for teenagers on engineering and a secondment to Frost Science in Miami to help develop exhibitions and systems for a new museum which opened in 2017. As well as managing the New Media team spread across multiple sites at the Science Museum Group he also ran the Science Museum Groups Digital Lab Initiative which experiments in emerging technologies. Dave is now an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Science Museum Group documenting the museum's recent past from a non curatorial perspective.

How do we preserve history in a violent present for an uncertain future? What is the next era of collection management? 

Today’s archival tools operate as though we’ve reached an unchanging global stability, which Francis Fukuyama once crowned, “The End of History.” Our tools assume a static world where archives and their meaning never change, relying on flows of capital, expertise, and materials that only briefly could be guaranteed.

But the wider world is shifting rapidly, challenging the ways we collect, preserve, and provide access to cultural heritage. Faced with fragile digital infrastructure, adversarial AI, and the increasing weaponisation of networks pose, the Western ideal of permanence gives way, revealing an inherent fragility it has fought to hide. Now, on the cusp of The End of the End of History, cultural stewards face existential threats to their archives—a widening gap between archival philosophy and the deteriorating material conditions threatening our collective memory.

New Design Congress and NDF invite you to join a collaborative exploration of digital preservation’s hidden vulnerabilities. Through accessible exercises that surface shared anxieties and threats, we’ll examine alternative paths for computing that embrace impermanence, decentralisation, ambiguity, and contextual resilience designed from unstable environments. Together, we’ll map the digital and physical risks facing Aotearoa’s cultural repositories and propose new threads for safeguarding cultural memory in a multi-crisis future. 

Participants will leave with:

• Informal training in the NDC Anxiety Games framework, enabling them to facilitate participatory and accessible evaluations of institutional vulnerabilities across multiple domains

• Shared, multi-perspective strategies for building resilience in digital preservation systems

• New perspectives on prioritizing preservation efforts in resource-constrained environments

• A deeper understanding of the socio-technical nature of archival challenges, presented from a perspective of strength beyond doomerism

• Connections with colleagues facing similar challenges

This workshop is designed for cultural stewards, archivists, curators, librarians, technologists, and policymakers involved in preserving Aotearoa’s cultural heritage. No technical background is required.

ABOUT CADE

Cade Diehm is the founder of the New Design Congress, an international research organisation forging a nuanced understanding of technology's role as a social, political and environmental accelerant. He studies, writes, consults and speaks regularly on topics such as digital power structures, privacy, information warfare, resilience, internet economies and the digitisation of cities.

With a background in information security, interface politics and digital systems, Cade and his team at New Design Congress work tirelessly to tease out and weave threads that can be pulled together to build a truly hopeful future.

Cade has collaborated with organisations across the world, including Signal, Google, Mozilla, Bauhaus Earth, Webrecorder, Open Archive, Superbloom Design, Furtherfield, C/O Berlin, Art Sonje Center, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the International Institute for the Environment and Development, the European Commission, the World Health Organization, the London College of Communication, Protocol Labs, the Deutschland Bundestag Prototype Fund, the Center for Digital Resilience, the Algorithmic Transparency Institute and many others.

Cade resides in Berlin with his partner and two Shiba Inus, Ripley and Kodak.