ChART
Self-guided museum tour generator and venue information app.
Time Frame
Two Business Weeks
July 2022
Task Background
Utilized user research, through interviews and qualitative synthesis, to design a speculative iOS app prototype aimed to plan and ease museum trips.
Deliverables
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High-fidelity prototype
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Project report
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Specification document
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Presentation to "stakeholders" (fellowship alumni and staff)
My Primary Roles
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Design facilitator
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Business researcher
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Project report author
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Presentation director
Project Overview
Self-guided tours, based on both user-selected destinations and interests selected upon account creation, plus general museum information.
App Features
Self-Guided Tours | Museum Information | Artwork Information
Favorites & Saved Tours | Maps With Amenities
Multiple Museums Supported
Researching Our Path
Working together in NYC, our team was aware of, and appreciative of, the vast collection of cultural education offerings offered. However, we found our own visits to be daunting: How long will it take? How much work is there? Where is the work, even? And where are the bathrooms?
Discovering Our Product's Patrons
We conducted problem space/user interviews and explored the types of common conundrums that fellow museum-lovers faced. Most often, it turned out that they often didn't have enough time to see everything they wanted and got lost easily in the process, but didn't want to engage in traditional guided tours.
We took these insights and crafted a persona and user journey to help us to understand where exactly these pain points exist.
A rudimentary "user journey" from second-hand research used formulate more targeted and precise questions for user interviews.
Once we took a step back to appreciate this story, we were able to affirm our initial frustrations as a more common experience than we hoped. We were able to then ask:
How might we facilitate an engaging, informational museum experience for visitors that encourages exploration and agency, while also respecting their time?
This question and its components - independence, agency, a respect for time and the user - acted as the foundation for our design process and the tasks that our app could perform.
A Canvas For Success
Our team embraced the challenge and built chART on these product principles:
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Make museums accessible and approachable to everyone.
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Prioritize the needs of the person, not those of the institution.
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Technology to enhance the experience, not detract.
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Inspire curiosity through exploration.
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Light the path for cultural discovery.
Framing Our Features
We realized a self-guided tour would address these needs in an efficient and attractive way, balancing agency with a "game plan." By leveraging combined emerging machine learning technologies with museums' sprawling informational databases, we believed could make a focused yet engaging experience for the persona that emerged.
Of course, it wouldn't be a museum information app without up-to-date museum information and maps that directly gives users what they need to know. Integrated with the self-guided tour's mapping system, we hope to allow users to set their own paths in their experience to get what they want and need in an efficient amount of time.
Museum-goers can also look up displayed works, read about them, and save them for reading later so that the experience truly leaves with them.
In addition to these core features, we also demoed multiple museum homepages, contextual (intra-museum) search, and exhibit information. These were all features that allow chART to be a fleshed-out experience for our persona and users, as well as hypothetical stakeholders and any museums that would be interested in the platform.
Ensuring The Experience
While our problem space was validated by research, our challenges emerged in creating a sustainable and accessible product, both visually and in integrating future museums, information, and update. We collaborated in creating a simple, consistent design that allowed artwork to shine while providing sufficient information.
We also ran usability tests to ensure that this would be an approachable, useful app for the everyday user. With iterative design changes (some of which are displayed here), we built a product that we think would be a boon to the museum-going experience.
We do have further changes we would take from these testing results, if we were given the time:
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Flow on adjusting time and content could be more intuitive and obvious
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Design multiple ways to enter to a specific museum from the exploration page
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The call to action button could be more obvious and emphasize
However, we saw our iterative design process create big improvements, and are happy with our
On The Slate
Due to the nature of this project as a timed speculative product, we were limited in scope and actions. Our team did take the time to speculate on what future steps would be taken, if possible, to improve the app:
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Android support, due to widespread international adoption
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Ticket and gift shop purchasing, to create an all-in-one experience and revenue routes
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Artwork scanning utilizing museum APIs, to ease the information and discovery process
Still, we feel that our MVP is an overall useful and informational app that would delight and help any museum-goer, whether a local looking to get out more, like our persona, or a visitor unsure what to expect.
Team/Workplace
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Client & business consultation
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Group facilitation
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Consensus activities
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Design/concept convergence
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Task prioritization
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Time management
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Report drafting
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Presentation construction
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Public speaking
Design
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User interviewing
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Business analysis
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Second-hand research
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Archetypes, personas & user journeys
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Design studio
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Service blueprints
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User flows
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Iterative design
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Mockup design
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Prototype construction
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Design sketching (paper & whiteboard)
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Figma
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Google Drive Suite
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Keynote
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Zoom
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Slack