2022 Digital Trends and Museums

A new year and another digital trends post. Were things much different to this post I did in 2021? Well yes, and no…

In the interests of time (i.e. laziness!) I’ve collated a bunch of sources below that I’m referencing for some client work:

• Forecasting 2022: The Cultural Trends We’re Watching This Year, Jing Culture and Commerce
• How Will 2021’s Digital Learnings Pave the Way for Museums In 2022?, also Jing Culture and Commerce – a sustainable online presence, partnerships, NFTs as a way to reach young audiences, accessibility
• From Immersive Everything to the Rise of Museum Unions, These 7 Trends Defined the Art World in 2021—and Will Shape the Year to Come, Artnet – notes the popularity of immersive experiences
• 6 Educational Technology Trends That Go All Out In 2022 – including animation, AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, big data, cloud computing
• Tech questions for 2022, Benedict Evans – also includes crypto, AR/VR, games, regulation and privacy
• Cuseum’s 2021 Year in Review – some cool projects here
• Lucidea Museum Forecast 2022 – again accessibility!

Plus, these posts via Ed Rodley from The Experience Alchemists’ workshops held with the Texas Association of Museums:

• Museums and Online Programming
• Organisational Capacity and Continuity
• Looking for the Light at the End of the Tunnel White Paper – this research informing this paper will be more widely released sometime in January

And, as to the “what was different?” question, my take is:

• Looking into what NFTs can do / might mean for our sector
• Increased availability of tools to aid accessibility
• AR / VR and AI
• Increased emphasis on sustainability for digital programming – being able to keep a project going internally with tools that can be managed in-house
• Continuing importance of digital literacy
• Increase in immersive experiences (and whatever we think about them, visitors generally love them!)
• A focus on personal health and wellbeing

Thanks to all the authors above for sharing their great work.

And, this image below is feedback from an evaluation I did where immersion was spontaneously mentioned by participants … some food for thought!