2020.3 - 2020.8
Recalling the museum experience for art lovers through a content organization application
CONTEXT
For a lot of exhibition-goers, what they missed most during the pandemic was the onsite art visiting experience. When I started my Springboard UX Design Bootcamp course, the regional stay-at-home order had been effective for a while. As a frequent exhibition-goer, I really miss my art visiting experiences. That's why I decided to create an iOS mobile application for frequent exhibition-goers and art lovers to relieve the onsite art visiting experience. This is also my capstone project in the UX Design Bootcamp.
PROBLEM
Though exhibition-goers/art lovers took many pictures and reviewed articles about the shows before and during their visit, they had a hard time recalling those visiting experiences after a while, let alone relieving their memories.
SOLUTION
An iOS mobile application that users can record their personal art visiting experience in the format of images, online articles, notes and files. These resources could be organized in different folders and users can curate their own exhibition memory based on their saved resources.
PROCESS
discover
Competitors analysis
There are many platforms providing exhibition-related information for a good art visiting experience. That's why I decide to conduct a competitive analysis to understand what these platforms are providing and what they are focusing. I selected 3 popular art visiting apps featuring different regions: CURATE LA, Exhibitionary and Art Rabbit.
After an all-around heuristic analysis, I discovered that these apps focus on the phase of "pre-show" and "mid-show", providing different kinds of resources to prepare users for a good experience with exhibitions. So I had this hypothesis that getting an all-round "pre-show" and "mid-show" preparation would help users have good art visiting experience and memory.
Surveys and interviews
To test my hypothesis, I did interviews with 5 people who visited art places more than twice every month from participants of a screener survey. The interview was conducted on zoom and the questions were focused on their art visiting experience.
Affinity mapping
I created an affinity map to organize insights from interviews. This helped me to understand their experience and it is also the starting point for looking into their real problems.
It turned out the "pre-show" and "mid-show" phases were not the most important to "relieve a good memory" about art visits. Instead, they did most things related to the exhibition during the "post-show" phase, such as sharing pictures on social media, checking critics or stories about the show online, purchasing gifts, collecting brochures, etc. However, they had more negative comments and experience during this phase.
DeFINE
Problem statement
Once I discovered the importance of "post-show" activities for exhibition-goers, I began to analyze their needs and expectations during this phase. So I synthesized my interviews and phrased users problems as the following questions:
1. How might we bring an onsite visiting experience back home?
2. How might we make use of photos and information we saw to remember unfamiliar topics/knowledge systematically?
3. How might we easily locate specific art resources we saved on our phones?
4. How might we share art visiting experiences with friends in a unique way?
Persona
While I understood the problems my users are facing, I created 2 personas based on the synthesis of the observations and analysis I’ve generated through the interview with other users. There are basically two types of users - the first one known as Annie, who is interested in art, and the second one known as Laura, who is working in the art field.
IDEATION
Prioritise features
I listed out all the solutions for Annie and Laura, taking into account their goals and pain points. I categorized them into three groups:
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A place they can record their personal art visiting experience
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A system where they can not only organise information and resources, but also easily get access to
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A platform where they can design their own content to share with friends
They can also be summarised as the feature of collecting, organising and sharing Annie and Laura's art visiting experiences.
Sitemap
Sketching for the best ideas
Though I am all by myself in this project, the good thing is I was "Annie" and "Laura". I understand their pain points and goals. So I stuck to the get-up-and-go attitude, quickly sketching out ideas I have in mind. I kept sketching for about 30 minutes until similar ideas appeared repeatedly. Then I went back to my personas, and went through Annie and Laura's art visiting story with all the different ideas.
design
Wireframes
I created the first wireframes based on the best idea I had which met all requirements and needs of Annie and Laura. Main features include:
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An exhibition folder to keep track of their visiting experience
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They can add photos, videos, online content, files and notes that relate to the exhibition
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An exhibition board where they can curate their own exhibitions from the content they saved earlier
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They can share this exhibition board with their friends
Choosing the style
I selected colors that are favored by most women, as 90% of users in my interviews and testing are female. Also, considering users will add different kinds of art content to this app, a simple design and background would not only match our target customers' taste, but also leave more space for users once they have more content.
usability test
I conducted two rounds of user testing. Each one has 5 participants. Because of COVID-19, I prepared remote testing after the first and second high-fidelity prototypes. My first step for usability testing is to write a usability plan . For the first round of testing, The main purpose was to see whether users can easily use the app and find it helpful to reinforce their art experiences. I conducted moderated tests based on my script and organized testing session notes for each participant. Next, I generated a report about the findings of the testing and recommendation for changes.
Then I created the second prototype based on findings from the first testing. The main purpose of the second testing was to see whether the changes made to the prototypes create a better user experience. Just like the first testing, I also generated a report for summery and further changes.
prototype
The final prototype was consistent with major features in the wireframes stage, which included collecting, organizing, and curating. However, after two rounds of usability testing, I decided to adjust the importance of each feature based on users' feedback. Therefore, “share and curate exhibition” became one of the major features.
You can interact with the prototype below
reflection
This is the first mobile app I have ever designed. With little background in this field, I spent 5 months learning while doing this project. I learned many things in this process.
First of all, users are your teammates. I always went back to users, whether through interviews, online testing, or even just put into their shoes to figure things out. For a project like this, which has a very niche user market, users are key to the solution.
Secondly, do testing as early as possible. I conducted user testing until after I had the high-fidelity prototype. Because that’s when I thought everything was clear enough. Though it's easy for users to test, it took me more time to finish the project, as I had to redesign many screens and features which should have redesigned in the wireframe stage.
Thirdly, find the right way to do user testing. Because the whole project was conducted during the pandemic when people had to keep a social distance. That’s why for the mobile app’s usability testing, I could only send links to participants and asked them to operate on their computers. Though the main experience won’t be much different, looking at a screen of a desktop and a screen of a phone definitely gave different feelings, especially for the visual design element.