CASE STUDY
GalleryPal
Improving the in-person viewing experience at art museums
Coming from a “traditional” waterfall development environment, GV sprint is a new method for me, and I was thrilled seeing the benefit of minimizing risk and avoiding any waste.
Since this project is a part of the course curriculum from Springboard, topics and initial user research were already provided, and I chose the museum project. I’ve never had an opportunity to work with an app that supplements real experiences, so the museum app sounded challenging and fun at the same time!
Goal of Project
Art museums and galleries want to increase customer satisfaction when viewing paintings, sculptures, and installations. My job was to analyze research findings and come up with a possible design solution, and test it at the end of day 5 to see if the idea was worth pursuing further.
Constraints
Improve in-person viewing experience
App based solution only
My Role
Designing, usability testing, and evaluating the iteration
Please note: this is a modified version of GV sprint for a one person team.
Day 1 Map
Understanding the Problems
There are many guests who come to art museums/galleries without much knowledge about the artwork or artists. At the end of their visit, they feel like they aren’t sure if they are making the most out of their visit because it’s hard to appreciate or form opinions without some vital information about the artwork, beyond small descriptions provided on the wall or in brochure. Also, each guest has their own interests, and their goals at the art museum vary.
Making a Map to Draft an End-to-end Experience
In order for each guest to leave the museum feeling he or she got the most out of their visit, I decided to design a personal tour guide app that provides as much or as little information wanted. To take advantage of the nature of mobile apps, I wanted to make users feel happy by including messages from the museum director, artists, and have reflection questions at the end of their visit.
Day 2 Sketching
Before starting to sketch, I got inspired from other apps first.
WikiArt
One of the most popular tools to find art online. Great way to learn how to organize art and artists as well as ordering prints and buying merchandise of your favorite art.
Featured artworks
Artists page (Bio + famous works)
Related Paintings
MoMA
One of the most popular museum apps. Learned how they tackle similar problems I am trying to solve.
Being able to input artwork’s audio number
Onboarding
Access to transcript during audio
Louvre Museum
Probably the most famous museum in the world. They handle many tours. Their collections are huge, so they have multiple ways to navigate/enjoy the museum, which is helpful.
Purchase ticket on app (“skip the line”)
Submenu (access info quickly)
Museum map
Image galleries (no words until you tap image)
Lonely Planet
Travel guide apps have a similar nature to museum apps. Lonely Planet is a well designed app, and many good ideas are shown on how to organize each content.
Bookmark
Short Summary, and READ MORE (for longer explanation)
Key information list (including website)
Crazy 8s
After selecting the key screen, I spent a total of 8 minutes to come up with 8 different ideas.
One mistake made early on was selecting the wrong key screen. For this app, I originally thought the most critical screen was the page showing each artwork. But I quickly realized that all the details I could include on this page were not so unique. The core uniqueness of this app is the page before landing on each artwork page, and there are many ways to approach this.
After completing sketching, I chose the last sketching which focuses on the story about the featured artist instead of artwork. Based on research findings, I concluded most guests are unfamiliar with a museum’s art, and they are interested in the stories behind each artwork. Starting with an artistʻs bio for learning how he or she became an artist is a great way for users to better understand the artist's work since one’s life story can be relatable.
Next, I designed the screen before and after the most critical screen that I choose from my crazy 8s.
The first page is the message from the museum director to make guests feel personally welcomed and introduce them to the special exhibition artist. The third page shows additional details about the artist, and focuses on the artist’s early life and how he or she became an artist.
Day 3 Decide and Create a Storyboard
Since my team consists of one person, I went with the last sketching from the crazy 8s on day 2. This design is somewhat unusual for a museum app, but I wanted to test if focusing on an artist's story is more impactful than listing all the techniques that the early research indicated. After all, GV sprint is the best time to take such a risk.
Today’s main task is to create panel storyboards that include the 3 panel boards from day 2. This is basically a lightweight sketched wireframe that I will use to build my prototype on day 4. Here is what my sketched wireframe looks like. The black arrows indicate the red route of this app.
Day 4 Prototype
Today is the day to build a prototype. Since no images or text were provided, I performed some research to come up with appropriate words and images. Then, I built the prototype. In order to complete everything in a day, I used Sketch app’s UI kit to speed up the work.
Day 5 Validate
I recruited 5 people who had visited museums in the last 2 years (instead of 1 year considering the COVID situation) to test the prototype. One positive and solid result was that the audio was highly appreciated, and everyone said they would use it.
Other feedback received:
All participants expected to see more about the special exhibition.
Most wanted to know how to plan their visit. (What the special exhibition is, what the top 5 are that you don’t want to miss, etc.)
Director’s message popup was not well received. (Several participants closed the window immediately.)
2 out of 5 participants didn’t notice the map and said the app needs to have it.
Back button would help when users get lost.
At the end of each testing, I asked a total of 9 questions to evaluate how useful the prototype was for their potential museum visit by using SUS (System Usability Scale). Overall, the prototype seemed well received, and I think it has good potential.
Question: I think that I would like to use this app again for my next museum visit.
84pts (out of 100 pts)
Question: I feel like I was able to get the most out of my museum visit.
88pts (out of 100 pts)
Based on the feedback received, I reworked the homepage and removed the director’s message, and here's what the latest iteration looks like:
Conclusion
I was eager to find out if 5 days was truly enough time to know if my idea was worth pursuing further or not. And I discovered it was. However, I will admit that I wasn’t able to include all the details in my prototype, and test participants seemed confused sometimes, as they had to use their imagination to give feedback.
Approximately 20% of feedback received was actually in the crazy 8s! Next time, I will be sure to combine good ideas from the crazy 8s to create the most critical screen.
The most important lesson I learned from this project is how important it is to select target users properly to conduct user testing. In the research, persona was designed for visitors who question whether they got the most out of their museum visits. This means I needed to select people who had visited an art museum recently, and were not quite satisfied with the experience, matching similar dissatisfaction features of the research. Since I had limited personal connections to make an ideal user selection, further testing with highly vetted target users should gain more accurate results.