Gallery Pal: A Design Sprint
As museums and galleries try to increase customer satisfaction while viewing art, Gallery Pal is an app that was designed to improve the experience of viewing art in a museum to give visitors information on the art pieces that they are curious to learn about.
In the following case study, I took on the challenge to complete a design sprint inspired by the Google Venture designers, which is a week-long design sprint modified to a single person team - me. The goal of this five-day design sprint is to create a potential solution that enhances the visitors viewing experience at the museum.
In this one-woman design sprint, I will go through the UX process in a thorough - yet low-fidelity way - to help Gallery Pal come up with a solution to design a way to improve the experience of viewing art in a museum or gallery. The two design constraints are:
focus on improving the in-person viewing experience
design the solution as a mobile app or a mobile-optimized website, since this would be the likely device that a museum gallery would have access to.
Day 1: Understanding Museum Visitors and Mapping Their Journey to Learning
On Day 1 of the design sprint, my objective is to understand the main problem that Gallery Pal intends to solve with its app by understanding the needs of the users. Since the users are the visitors of the museum, I reviewed the user research based on the following prompt, “Tell us about a recent time you visited an art museum or gallery.”
With the user research at hand, I was able to synthesize the information to find the common themes and insights. I was able to see the following trends:
The trends in the user research data are reflected very well in Gallery Pal’s user persona, Angela, a 23 year old Junior Art Director who lives in New York City. She is a regular museum goer who typically goes to browse whatever is on display at the moment. The user persona, Angela, embodies the needs and frustrations of the target user of Gallery Pal.
The user research shows that users want to know more about the art to have a better experience. They want the information to be easily accessible to them and help them appreciate the art in the gallery through the stories of the artist and the art’s greater context.
I sketched out a map of actions the user could take on the app to learn more about the art they are interested in. By doing this, I was able to visualize a potential solution for Gallery Pal that would give the users the features that would help them to get the most out of their visit to the art museum.
Day 2: Sketching it Out
After conducting some user research and having an idea of the needs the user wants to solve while using the app, I continued to Day 2 of the design sprint: a day dedicated to competitor analysis and inspiration through sketching.
This began with a solo-lightning demo where I looked at the solutions of the competitors. In the case of Gallery Pal, my competitors are other museums or online curators that provide information on art pieces to curious users. I looked at how each one approached helping visitors learn more about the different art pieces and the information that they included to inform them about the different pieces.
-
The British Museum
The British Museum has one of the biggest and most important art and archaeological collections in the world, so I assumed that they would have a well-figured-out solution for visitors to access information on the pieces. With over 13 million pieces at the museum, I was surprised that there wasn’t a better organizational system for the artwork in the app. There is an overwhelming long list of pieces in no particular order, a search button without much guidance and a static map that couldn’t be clicked on. If you happen to find the piece that you wanted to learn about, there is a photo, an audio clip and a description of it - with a link prompting you to learn more. When I clicked to learn more - I was led to a link to use one of my free trial permissions before needing to pay to unlock the full version! The description is what would be expected and tells the user what the piece is, where it’s from and its importance in ancient history. I think the app could improve its organization and search capabilities with either a code or a QR scan for the user to find the pieces that they want to learn about, easier.
-
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago is a world class art museum that attracts people and artists from all around the world. The museum’s app is structured into a virtual museum that gives users the ability to explore around the galleries by floors and different collections. As you move through the virtual galleries, little art icons pop up to show the different pieces, and prompt you to click on them to learn more about the individual artworks. There are two ways to access this additional information - either through virtual exploring the museum (which is perfect for remote museum visitors) or by typing an artwork code that is located next to the piece at the museum (perfect for perusing museum visitors). The highlighted information includes a picture of the artwork, the title, the artist, an audio clip on the history and importance of the piece and a transcript of the audio and credits. I think the museum’s solution has all the elements that a visitor would want: it is a simple and easy to navigate interface that provides key information that is available by listening or reading. The structure of the app allows for virtual visitors and in-person visitors to access the same information on the artworks, allowing for even more art lovers to learn and appreciate the pieces at the museum.
-
Smartify
Smartify is a global platform to discover art and culture from anywhere. Museums and galleries upload their pieces to the platform and the user uses a QR code to identify any piece of artwork that is in the database. It connects the user with information on works from all different museums instantly - either through searching or scanning the QR code. It gives a very comprehensive variety of information, including the title, the medium, artist, artist history, context of the piece, other works by the artist, and where it is located. It allows the user to save their favorites, prompts them with additional pieces by the artist, a link to the official museum description and museum merchandise. I was shocked how quickly it identified my art postcard and I was very impressed with the clean and beautiful layout of the information, in particular how it guided me to more works by the artist.
With fresh inspiration from the apps of museums and online curators, I had a good feeling of how other solutions were created to meet the same needs of the target user - a casual, creative art museum visitor, curious to learn more. By looking at other apps, I realized that it’s important to have a quick and clear way to search for the artwork. The information should be comprehensive and concise. Keeping these ideas in mind, I went forward with the sprint and quickly brainstormed some drafts of the most critical screens through the “Crazy 8 exercise.”
After completing the Crazy 8 exercise, I explored a variety of ways to structure the design of my most critical screen: the screen that presented the information about the art piece. Keeping in mind the needs of the users, I narrowed down the most important information that I think they would want: the title, the year, the medium of the piece on display, the artist, an overview of the piece and the movement that it is a part of. In my sketches, I considered adding links to art pieces nearby in the gallery, or a section for historical content - but I wanted to make sure that the screen remained focused on the most important things: information on the specific piece. Since the users wanted to explore the information on their own terms, I wanted to allow for the ability to either read a briefing or see more if the user was interested, without creating clutter on the screen.
From my Crazy 8 Screen, I chose a sketch that had a small side icon for the picture that I thought could be enlarged if the user wants to have a closer look, but since it is assumed that the user is standing right in front of it I did not want to make it fill the entire page. I included the title, year, and medium off to the side. As I considered which information to go into more depth, I decided that the name of the artist was necessary, but also the story of the artist can really add some interesting depth to the story of the artwork. Because of this, I decided to link the artist to it’s own page, should the user want to learn more. I included a briefing of the piece with the option to click more - which would expand the page. I added a subheading about the movement the piece is a part of because, in addition to the artist, the movement is crucial in understanding the context of the piece in a broader society.
I created a three-panel board of the screens that comes before and after the critical screen. First I have the screen that the user interacts with to scan the art piece and load up the info, the critical screen that tells the information about the piece, and the screen that follows the art page - more information on the life of the artist.
Day 3: Decide and Create a Storyboard
With my three-panel board of screens completed around my critical screen, I continued to expand on this in Day 3 of the sprint. Today was about deciding and creating a storyboard to plan how the users will interact with the app to complete the red route - finding information on a piece of artwork.
I began the storyboard at the point when the user first downloads the app. The user enters into the homepage of the app and sees some suggestions of things to explore around the museum. They are greeted with information on new exhibits at the museum, they can search for something in particular on the museum search bar, they can explore using a map or they can scan a piece of artwork.
Using the map icon on the bottom bar, the users can see where they are, see what collections are on each level, and access the artwork info by clicking on the tiny icons around the map that show where the artwork is located. This would allow for virtual visitors to also appreciate the art at the museum. The middle icon on the bottom bar leads to a scanner where the user will activate to scan the art that they want to learn more about. This feature will instantly recognize the art and bring up some key information on the art piece. If the user is interested to learn even more, they have the option to click on the artist name to learn more about the artist or to expand the “more” features and read more about particular topics.
Day 4: Prototype
With my storyboard plotted out and my red route in mind, I spent Day 4 of my design sprint creating mock-ups of Gallery Pal to turn into a prototype for testing. Using Figma, I made my storyboard sketches come to life by creating a high-fidelity mock-up of the vital app screens needed to complete my red route.
The user's red route is to learn more information about a piece of artwork. Using the Gallery Pal app, the user is able to take their cellphone and scan the artwork to learn more about the piece they are curious about.
As I move into user testing, I am curious to find out if the current design ideas meet user expectations. I put together some questions in preparation for testing the prototype:
Can the user easily find a way to scan the artwork from the homepage?
Does the artwork information page have everything the user wants to know?
Does the user find the artist link useful?
Are the art pieces on the museum page organized in a clear way to find what the virtual user would be looking for?
Day 5: Testing & Validating
The final day of the design sprint is spent testing the prototype by following the “The Five-Act Interview” process. The interviews start off with a friendly welcome to explain a bit about the project, ask some context questions to better understand who the test user is, introduce the prototype, give the user a few app-specific tasks, and followed by a quick debrief. I gathered up five people who I know enjoy going to the museum and are curious to learn more about art and got started! The user participants range in age from 25 - 65 years old.
All five of my test users were enthusiastic museum goers who have a general curiosity to learn more. I found “The Five-Act Interview” style to be a positive experience, since it kept the structure of the conversation as casual, yet productive. I conducted the interviews remotely while using Invision for the prototype.
All of the test users were screened beforehand and have:
Visited a museum in the last year (either in-person or remotely)
All have paid extra for either an audio tour or an in-person tour at places of interest
By conducting these user tests, I was able to see how users interacted with the current design of Gallery Pal and understand how it could be better designed for users to complete the main red route: learning more information on a piece of artwork they are interested in.
The main things that I wanted to understand during the interviews included:
seeing how easy it was for users to find the scanner from the homepage
knowing how the users felt about the artwork information
understanding what the users thought about the museum map screen
From the homepage, I gave the test users the task of scanning a piece of artwork. Based on the user testing, all the test participants had no issues finding the way to get to the scanner - using both the action button and the bottom bar navigation.
Once they arrived at the artwork page, the users were satisfied with the content of the information - although a majority of test users said that the information was presented in an overwhelming and dense way. There were too many words and not enough quotes, paragraphs, or bullet points to make it easier to scan. My test user who was older said that it needs a bigger font to read. Another user said that she would prefer to listen to the information.
All of the users said that the map page was another way to organize and find artwork using the museum map, which could also be used for virtual museum visits.
Moving forward, critical usability issues to address would include reformatting the information to be easier to scan and read, as well as incorporating the ability to listen.
Next Steps for Gallery Pal
Following the user testing, the next steps would include iterations that would redesign the artwork information pages to make them easier for users to scan. I would incorporate a combination of dropdowns, paragraphs, quotes and lists - as suggested by the test users - as well as an audio recording, so users can learn in their own style. Keeping in mind the user red route, these iterations are crucial to give the users information that is easy to read and absorb.
Final Thoughts on the Design Sprint
I found the design sprint to be an enjoyable experience that went straight to the brainstorming and problem-solving aspects of the UX process. It was a new perspective to have the research and branding already provided and to jump in and figure out how to help museum visitors learn about the art in the galleries.
The condensed format of the design sprint has a lot of benefits, including a high-fidelity solution at the end of five days! Although with the reduced time and independent creation of the project, I had less input from people along the way. With user input involved during the ideation sketches or initial wireframes, it is likely that I would have recognized the overwhelming structure of the text before turning it into a higher fidelity prototype.
During this process, I realized that I appreciate working with as much user feedback as possible along the way, to understand what they want to experience and see how they experience using my design solutions. I also missed the input from colleagues who contribute valuable brainstorming sessions to come up with a variety of ways to solve the same problem. But it is undeniable, a design sprint is a great process to come up with a testable prototype solution in a short period of time!