Google Design Sprint
Customizing your museum experience
The challenge
Visitors of art galleries want to make the most out of their visit, often with little preparation. However, scanning the extensive amount of art and complementary information makes them feel overwhelmed, often leaving the gallery with the feeling they missed out on something interesting.
The solution
To help the museum visitor have a satisfying and light experience, I designed a website that guides the visitor through the museum, providing them additional information on the art they are interested in.
My role
The project was performed as a design sprint. As a solo UI/UX designer, I was responsible for analyzing the given research, ideation, prototyping, and testing.
Goal
Run a modified 5-day solo design sprint to create a solution and test it to improve the experience of viewing art at a gallery or museum.
Constraints
- The solution must improve the in-person experience of art gallery visitors.
- The solution must be usable on mobile devices.
Day 1 – Understand & map
Day 1 of the design sprint was about understanding the problem space by analyzing research materials, followed by mapping out how users can achieve the defined goal.
Different visitors have different expectations
By analyzing the interviews, it became clear that museum visitors have different definitions of a successful visit:
- Some visitors are interested in art interpretation, others in the artist’s life, and yet others in the art techniques
- Some visitors like to absorb all art and information whereas others want to see the highlights only
Visitors get overwhelmed by too much information
Analyzing the interviews further, I discovered two main problems art gallery visitors encounter:
- Getting overwhelmed by too much information and choices of art pieces to look at
- Leaving the museum feeling like they missed out on interesting information
Entering the museum curious, leaving satisfied
With the insights from the research, I created a map that defines what steps the museum visitor has to take to reach their goal of leaving the museum satisfied.
- Generating a personal tour: after entering the art gallery, the visitor can generate a personal tour, which matches their interests, so that they do not have to filter the art pieces by themselves.
- Getting a route to follow: by telling the visitor what art pieces match their interests, the user gets assured that they will not miss the highlights.
Day 2 – Sketch
Day 2 focused on sketching. At first, a modified version of lightning demos was performed, where inspiration from competitors was gathered. After that, I created sketches using the Crazy 8 exercise. The day finished with the solution sketch.
Lightning demos
Guiding the visitor through the museum
A lot of museum apps like Xamoom or Orpheo let the museum prepare guided tours in different lengths to lead the visitor through the museum.
Providing the visitor with extra materials
All tools that were looked at provide explanatory information about the art to the user. This can be in the form of textual descriptions, audio guides, extra visual materials, or video guides.
Giving visitors free WIFI
Some museums like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam provide the visitor with free WIFI. That way the user can save mobile data, which reduces the barrier of using their software.
Less than 2% of museum visitors download a museum app
A research study from 2017 from the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh discovered that 92.9% of museum visitors brought a mobile device to the museum but only 1.9% of visitors had their app installed.
Crazy 8
Combining insights from the research with the inspiration from the lightning demos, I performed the Crazy 8 exercise. In this exercise, 8 idea sketches are created in 8 minutes, ensuring to generate a lot of ideas in a short time frame.
Reducing cognitive load and tailoring the visit
While performing the Crazy 8 exercise, I focused on ideas that help reduce the cognitive load that visitors encounter in art galleries and give the most interesting experience according to the visitor’s preferences.
Solution sketch
I combined the ideas from the lightning demos into a solution sketch.
Starting by generating the personalized tour
The visitor can choose the duration of the tour, since they may have a fixed time constraint. They can choose the type of information they are interested in because different visitors have different interests.
Sparking curiosity by previewing the tour
After selecting their preferences, the visitor gets an overview of the tour which was generated for them. That way they get a first glance of what to expect.
Educating the visitor about the art pieces
The tour starts with the first art piece. The description is customized to the interests and length the visitor chose in the setup.
Day 3 – Storyboard
On day 3 of the design sprint, I created a storyboard, which describes the solution idea from start to finish.
Skip the burden of downloading an app by having a mobile website
Since the research discovered that less than 2% of museum visitors download a mobile app, I decided to design a mobile website, so that the user does not have the burden of downloading an app.
One clear task on each screen to ensure accessibility
Since museum visitors are diverse in terms of technical experience and age, the website needs to be as easy to use as possible. In each screen, the user gets one clear task, like choosing the duration, the interests, or viewing a piece of art.
Day 4 – Prototype
On day 4 I created a prototype following the draft of the storyboard.
Clearly marking interactive elements
The design uses only one accent color. I chose blue, because it is the color most people like. Items in this color mark interactive elements, so that they stand out and get recognized by the user. Each screen has only one button so that the call to action is clearly recognizable even for visitors without much technical background.
High contrast for easy readability
The interface is intentionally minimalist. Since the user should focus on the art itself, they should not be distracted by a flashy design. During their experience, the visitor gets a lot of text to read. I chose a high contrast with black text on a white background because the user will spend a lot of time reading the descriptions.
Day 5 – Test
The prototype from day 4 was tested on day 5 to gather feedback. I conducted five remote usability tests with people who visit museums at least once a year.
Findings
“I enjoyed the beginning till the end”
All five participants accomplished the tasks easily and enjoyed the experience. They liked that they can customize the experience and the minimalistic design.
“Is this already my tour?”
Two interview participants took a moment to understand that they finished setting up the tour. For them a clear message was missing that they can see their personalized tour now. To improve that, a message should be shown which says ‘We just created your personalized tour. Get started now’.
“I would love to choose a specific exhibition”
Two interview participants would like to see more options to customize the experience. For them, being able to choose an artist, a particular exhibition or epoche would make the customized museum experience even more valuable.
Next steps
The concept of generating and guiding the visitor through a personalized tour was well received in the usability tests, so the design can go through a next iteration applying the main findings from the tests. The next round of usability tests should be conducted in person instead of remotely. In that way, the user will be in a more natural setting, so that I could learn more about how convenient the website will be while viewing art in-person.
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