Museum App
Research & Discovery
Context
This was a project I began in 2021, as part of a UX design course. My objective was to gather the research necessary design a virtual tour app for an art museum.
Deliverables
User Interviews
Secondary Research
Empathy Map
Journey Map
Personas
Empathize
Keeping in line with the first step of the Design Thinking process (Empathize) I knew that my first steps for this project should be seeking understanding of both the users and potential stakeholders’ needs and motivations.
Secondary Research
I theorized that a key stakeholder for a museum-touring app would be the museum itself, potentially looking to improve its visitors’ experiences. With that in mind I began reviewing secondary sources with an aim to ground myself in some knowledge of trends in museum visitation and what concerns an art museum in 2021 might have.
A recurrent theme, I discovered, was a concern for how to adapt to a changing American population and the pressing need to attract visitors beyond their previously core demographic (a whiter, older and wealthier population). There was a specific emphasis on the need to better engage Gen Z and people of color, particularly those from the Latino community.
Interviews
My next step was to seek out first-hand accounts of how people experience a visit to a museum and the challenges they might run into on their visit. Seeking diverse inputs for any UX project is always important, since the insights they lead to can improve the end design. In this case, though, diversity in my interview subjects was key to answering my stakeholder’s needs.
I recruited 5 interview candidates and succeeded for the most part in gathering a pool diverse in characteristics pertinent to my project, but I did fall short in age representation (the spread was only 30s to 50s). This was due in part to relying on my own social circle when, ideally, I should’ve pulled rom outside my own social net. I then developed a list of open-ended interview questions that I hoped could lead me to unexpected insights instead of bias confirmations.
Mappings
Recordings and a transcription service helped me to parse the significant amount of interview data into usable insights that that I could build personas on. I used digital stickies to help me keep track of key points and quotes (as well as who said them thanks to color-coding) while still being able to rearrange their groupings. After an initial affinity mapping I developed an empathy map. These exercises helped me identify the commonalities of disliking crowds, fear of missing exhibits, how children impact a museum visit and a noticeable divergence between those that like to to take their time wandering vs those that either prefer or need to be efficient in getting through exhibits..
Personas
At this point I had enough information to start developing personas based on real users and needs. With 3 personas I felt I could explore the main differences between users. Carmen (The Social Skimmer) functions a representative of a younger crowd, driven by social concerns, her internet presence and a desire to move fairly quickly between exhibits. Keisha Burton (The Art Enthusiast) is the retiree that generally visits the museum alone and likes to spend a lot of time leisurely strolling through the museum and examining everything. Mark Emerson is the representative of users with children, since children have a substantial impact on both the time one can devote to a visit and the overall logistics involved. In addition to the real wants and pain-points of my interviewees, I added a particular challenge to each persona to remind me of accessibility concerns while the app is being designed. For instance Carmen is primarily a Spanish-speaker with low English-fluency, Keisha has diabetic and mobility concerns and Mark is color-blind.
The Journeys
With Personas finally in hand, I developed journey maps for them. Laying out their actions and potential issues they might face with each one really helped me identify the extent of what my touring app would need to handle.
Conclusion
By the time I was wrapping up research on this project, I was offered a UX position that took me away from theoretical practice and landed me in the midst of plenty of real-life design work. As a result, this app never reached the design-stage, but the lessons I learned working through the Empathize part of design-thinking continue to be valuable in my professional work (which you can view here).