Discovery… it’s more than just finding a piece of information to complete a specific task. It’s more than just search. It is uncovering the unexpected, the “aha!” moment, or the deeper story behind a familiar subject. It is an experience – the user experience – within a digital space. It also happens over time, over multiple sessions as contexts and understanding changes.
This presentation looks at some design examples within the cultural heritage domain that are crafted to foster and encourage curiosity, leading to discovery. Examples draw on different subjects, particularly ones that blend content from different genres and countries. We unpack design approaches that deliberately invite curiosity and “horizontal navigation” through different information paths. Then, we look more closely at some techniques that UX designers can use to shape these experiences, such as how to leverage the user’s context of use, how to integrate cultural contexts, and how to gracefully find meaning in large scale data sets.
This talk was presented at the 2025 edition of the annual conference of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA International). View the conference program. To explore the UXPA conference further, you can visit their on-demand video library from the 2025 conference.