My Museum
Reimagining how people experience art museums
Timeline
6 Weeks
Deliverables
Concept Video
Experience Prototype
Lean Canvas
Context
UW MHCI+D Experience Design Class
Team
Jaye Ahn
Jamila Aliveya
Angela Goldberg
Sharique Khan
Overview
Over 6 weeks, my team and I spoke with museum-goers and tested an app that was created to curate a more meaningful art-museum experience. We informed our design using insights from secondary research, guerilla interviews, and subject-matter experts and tested it by simulating a museum. In addition, we strategically analyzed the business potential of promoting our app and its purchase through a lean canvas framework. Leveraging customer experience design principles, we created a transformed end-to-end museum experience through our app, enhancing visitor engagement even after they leave the premises.
My Role
Lead Experience Design (XD) Researcher
Created an experience prototype of a museum
Conducted 2.5 hours of observation at museum and 3 guerilla interviews with museum-goers
Designed experience prototype testing plan and tested with 4 participants
Designed and conducted a concept test with 2 participants
Created wireframes to communicate design ideas
Handed off actionable research insights to visual design team
Collaborated with designers to advocate for user needs
Communicated the story of our design by shooting and editing a concept video
Background
People superficially engage with art at museums for various reasons. Research by Cascone (2019) indicates that the average person spends just 27 seconds observing a single artwork, with other studies suggesting even shorter attention spans. Moreover, when individuals try to connect with the art by reading accompanying blurbs, they often encounter language that is difficult to comprehend. As one blogger put it, "I'm done pretending to understand contemporary art... Unlike movies, where viewers have the power to determine success or failure, we lack the ability to choose the art we want to see." This highlights a lack of understanding and autonomy within the museum experience.
Problem Statement:
People approach art at museums objectively which can lead to superficial engagement with the art.
Generative Research
Observation & Guerrilla Interviews at Henry Art Gallery (N = 11)
Our team conducted 5 hours of observation at the Henry Art Gallery and 11 guerrilla interviews with guests that were at different phases of their experience: arriving, undergoing, and departing.
Method Rationale: Helped us grasp people's behavior and attitudes at art museums, and gain sensitivity towards the space.
Research Questions:
How do people behave at art museums?
What do people expect from their museum visit?
What do people remember from their museum visit?
What needs and desires to people have at art museums?
What challenges do people face at art museums?
AEIOU Observation Strategy
We used the AEIOU framework to guide our notetaking during observations:
Activities
Environments
Interactions
Objects
Users
Additionally, we paid attention to the following:
Duration of how long people stand in front of art
Repeated patterns
Points of confusion (breakdowns)
Body language
Facial expressions
Where people are looking
Are people alone? With other people?
Major Findings:
1/ Photos can serve as memorabilia at a museum.
2/ Not being able to connect with the art negatively impact the overall experience.
3/ Motivations for visiting museums are personal and can vary.
4/ Interactive museums are becoming the norm and are a desirable experience.
Design Challenge:
How might we enhance visitors' exploration, reflection, and overall experience at art museums while fostering long-term comfort in visiting museums?
Ideation
Utilizing the 7 structured rules of brainstorming, we generated over 20 ideas in total. We narrowed them down based on design principles and crafted "experience stories" from personas' perspectives to further communicate ideas.
Project Constraints:
The experience we provide must be delivered by way of a product (UX) or service (SD). We must situate this product or service within a larger holistic end-to-end customer experience (CX).
A central feature of the experience we create must be information (IX), whether delivered by a product, service, person or thing.
Design Principles
Encourages personal, unforced reflection
Facilitates a slower museum experience
Promotes informal learning
Desired Outcomes
A personal learning experience
An interactive learning experience
Foster empowerment to approach any art
Initial Concept
Our final idea was My Museum, an app offering in-museum activities like iSpy, the ability to document multiple museum visits, and transform blurbs to make them easier to read. Before building and testing a prototype, we further developed our concept through bodystorming, creating wireframes, identifying personas, creating a customer journey map, and outlining user flows to help visualize and conceptualize our idea.
Initial Wireframes
Target User:
People who are new to museums and art, but want to learn about art and develop an appreciation for it. Over time, users will become more advanced, and the next steps in our design process would be to create functionality for more novice and expert art enthusiasts.
Context of Use:
Inside the museum, users can translate complex blurbs, highlight interesting findings, save artwork pictures, and make notes.
After their visit, the app provides further insights on favorite artworks and creates a personalized "art aficionado" identity based on their collection.
Value Proposition
My Museum fosters art appreciation and cultivates genuine interest by extending art education beyond museum walls. This approach encourages frequent museum visits and boosts overall engagement.
Hypotheses
If people had activities to do at a museum and an ability to document their experience, then they will have a more meaningful and memorable experience
If people were able to approach the art subjectively and draw on personal interpretations, then they will feel more comfortable in art museums.
Other Assumptions:
We are designing for people who have a self-proclaimed interest in going to art museums and do not need to be motivated.
Evaluative Research
I led my team through prototype testing at different fidelity levels to gather valuable insights into user responses. This iterative process allowed us to steer the development of our concept in the right direction. I analyzed the collected data, generated findings, and presented next steps to the visual design team (Jaye + Jamila), shaping our app's design accordingly.
Concept Testing: Expert Interviews (N = 2)
Conveniently, my master's program and the museology PhD students share the same building, providing a valuable opportunity for collaboration. Recognizing this, I took the initiative to engage with two individuals specializing in different areas: one with expertise in natural science museums and the other focused on art museums, who was actively working at an art museum. During our conversations, we sought their thoughts on our idea and tapped into their knowledge of the business aspects of museums.
Method Rationale: Allowed us to gain insight into the business side of museums and get an early response to our concept.
Major Findings:
1/ Technology can act as a companion, facilitating the art-processing experience.
“...People always process the art [better] when they have someone else [to] process it with... I think for the... tech portion, I think that could be really cool.” - SME 2
2/ Promoting personal reflection can collapse the hierarchy between curators and visitors.
“...One thing that was really important was for museum visitors to understand that their voices and their interpretations are valid.” - SME 2
3/ Remembering the art can foster ongoing interest in art and encourage return visits.
“We love going to museums and we love to remember stuff...we love to remember what we found interesting.” - SME 1
4/ Providing educational content about specific art would be difficult in a museum-agnostic app.
“...to have the [relevant] exhibit pieces that are up...like in the sense of...these are all the [current] pieces you might see...[to be] able to save those or connect them to other museums may be difficult.“ - SME 2
2. Lo-fi Paper Prototype Testing (N = 2)
After defining our concept, I facilitated interactive sessions where participants reviewed wireframes of the app journeys, sharing their thoughts and feelings. I also led the research efforts by creating the research plan, defining hypotheses, and developing the session guide.
At this stage, our app's concept had the following features:
Camera that saves art to personal collection and a way to capture reactions
AI blurb transformation that makes blurbs easier to read
An iSpy activity to be played at the museum
Method Rationale: Gain valuable insights into people's responses to our ideas in a cost-effective and time-efficient manner before making further resource commitments.
Affinity Diagram
A participant's lo-fi paper prototype test
Major Findings:
1/ Overall, people enjoyed the iSpy concept but some prompts were difficult to relate to.
Potential Next Steps:
Rephrasing prompts to make it clearer that they are prompting personal reflection
Include prompts that may be more related to the artwork itself, such as looking for brush style or time period
"I thought the I Spy was engaging, it just gives me a little bit more interactivity with the museum if I'm not exactly sure what we are doing here. Like I look at the art but it just helps me go a little bit deeper." - P1
"I think the prompts, if they are clear enough, can definitely prompt a reflection. I would just think about the phrasing of it in general, like how you can for them to find connections between their personal lives and art. Maybe they don't find them as well, like giving an opt out as well." - P2
2/ The current design of the personal collection does not give people an understanding of their taste in art.
Potential Next Steps:
Could add statistics on “your saved art is 32% realism, 12% this, etc.” in museum snapshot in order to help people identify their taste in art
Replace personality with taste due to complexity of defining a personality
"I don't feel like this fully embodies that [helping people understand their taste], especially getting a sense of knowing what kind of art I like. So this is just one piece of art, but I would almost like to see that in a summary on my personal profile. Maybe in my actual personality." - P1
3/ People do not see the value of the blurb translation feature.
Potential Next Steps:
Add the ability to visualize confusing parts of the blurb on the camera
Remove the blurb translation feature
"Now that I've gone through, I know that the picture I took of the Mona Lisa goes to my personal collection and my thought process is like, why would I take a picture of the blurb without the photo next to it?. . . the blurb itself I don't know if I would necessarily need to see that summarized in a different way." - P1
4/ People wouldn't use the app around others because of the stigma of being on your phone while in a museum.
Potential Next Steps:
Design an experience that accommodates multiple users interacting through the app during a museum visit
"If I was in a group of friends, I feel like they would kind of look at me funny if I had my phone out the whole time I was at a museum. . . There's just like a little bit of a stigma about being present with the art versus like people who have their phone out the whole time. So I think that that would be a blocker or discouraging thing from using the app." - P1
Additional Findings
A participant felt that gamifying the museum experience has the potential to be both fun and educational.
One-tap options for general reactions would be preferable for saving artwork, as opposed to leaving notes.
The app is less useful in museums that are very interactive and could be used in more traditional, less interactive art museums.
Museum mode, as well as other key features such as I Spy and Meditative Moments needed more explanation on what they were.
3. Experience Prototype Testing (N = 4)
For our experience prototype, we simulated a museum experience by creating three distinct areas: home, museum front desk, and the museum gallery. I created the session guide while getting feedback and input from my team, as well as walking my team through each phase of testing. We tested with peers within our network who had various experiences with art museums - from occasional visitors to very frequent visitors.
Method Rationale: Allowed us to understand how people might use our app in the real-world context of their home/museums.
Home
We recreated a living room that consisted of a couch, TV, flowers, book, and mug. This is where participants started their experience after arriving. This is where we introduced our concept and gave an overview of what we would be guiding participants through. After explanations we gave participants paper screens of the onboarding experience, and ticket-buying experience and then provided them a physical ticket to hand to the museum staff.
Museum Front Desk
We recreated a museum’s front lobby that consisted of various signage, a museum staff, lobby music played on a bluetooth speaker, and utensils for their activity in the exhibit. When the participant was going into the museum, they welcomed the participants and told them about our two exhibits: the Black and White exhibit and the Salvador Dali exhibit, and scanned their ticket. On the participant’s way out, the museum staff would welcome them back and hand over their printed museum snapshot.
Museum Gallery
We created a museum gallery with two exhibits, each featuring 5 artworks and accompanying blurbs on printed paper. The artworks were displayed on large foam board walls, with surrounding tables for participants to use while writing. Signage guided participants towards the gallery exit. Inside the gallery, we provided instructions on using the paper prototype of the app for playing iSpy and using the camera to take photos. As participants explored the gallery, we encouraged them to vocalize their thoughts and emotions while addressing any questions they had.
Affinity Map
Major Findings:
1/ There was anticipation around capturing information that would otherwise be lost while at the museum.
"I think a lot of the times when I go to museums, whatever questions I'm getting or anything... it all remains very unstructured and just gone after the museum. So with the app, I'm hoping that I can write some of those down and they'll help me retain some of that information or whatever engagement I had with art pieces better." - P4
2/ People didn't like the inability to reuse iSpy prompts.
Potential Next Steps:
Add the ability to reuse prompts
"The only challenge was that when we were in the exhibit I feel like I used up my prompt, and I'm not sure if I had to go over all the prompts beforehand or if once I finished one prompt the next one would appear." - P2
3/ People associated museum snapshots with images and not a summary of their visit.
Potential Next Steps:
Change the language to make it clear that it’s not a page full of images
Add pictures from people’s museum visit
Add the ability to exclude things from your taste profile
Add qualitative information such as emotional responses from the visit
"When I first read snapshots I thought of images, and was expecting to see my images.
Museum snapshots would mean the data? [Yes] Okay. So it would be pretty much like this but like expanded...because to me when I think of snapshots, I just think of images. I feel like you might be able to find a more relevant word to use than snapshot." - P2
4/ iSpy encourages personal interpretation and discourages caring about other perspectives.
"I think it [iSpy] makes you feel a little bit more comfortable being at an art museum because I don't feel like there are expectations about how I need to perceive the art, it's really allowing me to perceive it in a way that makes me feel like home or makes me feel calm." - P1
Additional Findings:
Wording of the prompt influences actions
Knowing whether their reactions, etc would be shared changes the kinds of reactions and notes people would want to record
iSpy might not make sense at first if someone is unfamiliar with the game I Spy in general
There's an apprehension for taking photos of every artwork found during iSpy
The concept of museum mode was still unclear even by the end of the test
There was confusion around the difference between the camera and iSpy
People couldn’t envision themselves using the app in a social setting because they wouldn’t want to be glued to their phones with another person there
Taste in art isn’t only associated with numbers
People could envision themselves revisiting their snapshot beyond their museum visit
Some people preferred to look around first before playing iSpy
Final Prototype
Get Personalized Recommendations
The app suggests upcoming and ongoing exhibits that match the user's preferences and favorite artworks, to inspire them to explore. It also offers content from museums that are partners of the app and allows users to purchase tickets in-app.
Play iSpy in Museum Mode
While in the museum, users can engage with prompts that foster connections between them and the art, allowing them to respond and react, enhancing their personal appreciation and understanding.
Relive your museum experience long after it ends
After a museum visit, users are presented with a visit summary of their experience, which contributes to their collection of memories from all past museum visits. The summary includes the following:
Statistics/Photos from their day
Museum Personality
Visualization of tags/responses to art
Document Museum Artwork
Users are able to save their pictures of artwork and notes from the museum. They can view their collection anytime, exploring favorite artists, accessing related educational content, and discovering connections among their artworks.
Our final concept video that I shot, edited, and wrote the script for in order to tell the story of our end to end experience.
Next Steps:
Enhance the app's functionality to facilitate a social experience, enabling seamless usage for groups
Conduct more research on the ways people react to art in order to inform design
Increase the range of activities available in museum mode (beyond iSpy) to provide visitors with a richer experience
Conduct final prototype testing in an art museum
Limitations of the project:
We weren't able to conduct in-depth semi-structured interviews due to time constraints
Our design intervention was constrained heavily by our decision to remain museum-agnostic in order to make a larger impact on museum experiences
The experience prototyping test's design restricts the level of immersion, leading to an encounter that may deviate from an authentic museum experience.
We tested features of the app that weren't yet engineered, which could affect the user’s overall experience.
Reflections
Evangelize the value of research.
Throughout the project, I assumed a leadership role in conducting extensive testing of our concept and prototypes. The resultant findings and recommendations not only highlighted the value of the time invested, but also served as a testament to the benefits of UX research. I really enjoyed taking charge of the research aspect of this project and guiding my team in understanding the significance of diverse research methodologies.
Good handoffs between research and design are crucial.
As the lead researcher, my primary responsibility was to steer the project in the right direction through our research efforts. Regrettably, during our initial round of guerilla interviews and observation, I felt that I did not adequately capture and communicate our findings to the team, which subsequently hindered the ideation process. Yet, learning from this mistake, I took immediate action to ensure that all subsequent research rounds yielded clear and actionable recommendations. These well-defined insights empowered our designers to effectively implement necessary changes and improvements.