Musings

Project lead, designer, and researcher

Museums are pillars of their surrounding communities, collecting works from influential artists both local and international. With all their exhibits and available activities, it can be intimidating for first time visitors to find and reserve tickets for limited time exhibits and activities. Regular museum-goers want an easier, quick way to make bookings. Enter Musings: an easy to understand, accessible application that lets new and frequent visitors make the most of their museum plans.

The Problem

Users need a way to peruse exhibits and book reservations without being overwhelmed by a barrage of images.

Demographics

When starting my research, I assumed that most museum-goers attend for educational purposes. However, through interviews and analysis, I found that many find the practice to be meditative, inspiring, or helpful for their catalogue of references. I live in an area where there are plenty of museums, so it was easy to find interviewees willing to talk for a bit about their experiences. I even toured a museum myself after going through their website— an easy way to put myself in the place of the user.

Market Analysis & Insights

To get a better understanding of what the public needed, I conducted a competitive analysis of MoMA, a local museum, and the California Academy of Sciences, a collective of environmental-science focused exhibits, activities, and learning experiences in California. MoMA's website uses bold fonts and large images to keep the emphasis on the exhibits, but I found that navigating the site became a web of nested menus upon trying to search for educator resources. CAS' website used bright colors to hold the attention of their younger demographic, but the elements on the pages were not always aligned and skewed the visual hierarchy.

I found that there was a need for experiences that put users first as opposed to sacrificing readability for aesthetics.

Sketches

I drafted my ideas using paper, pen, and highlighters. On a separate piece of paper, I jotted down notes about components, screen layouts I wanted to move forward with, and changes for the lo-fi mockup stage.

Low Fidelity Mockups

I adapted my sketches into low fidelity mockups for testing. I kept image sizes large to show off exhibits, but I made sure there were clear divisions between them so as not to overwhelm the user.

Testing

After creating a lo-fi prototype (which you can interact with here), I conducted a few rounds of usability testing. I learned that the text on my buttons was not entirely clear and that users wanted to be able to book multiple activities and exhibit visits at the same time. Users liked the ease of navigation overall, but I needed to revise a few items to enhance clarity.

High Fidelity Mockups

In my mockups, I applied an earthy, limited palette to evoke a sense of tranquility, utilizing pops of ochre on buttons related to making purchases. I wanted to provide a subtle difference between buttons purely for navigation and those linked to the buying flow to ensure users remained certain of where they led. I pared down some features for scope (namely the map function) to direct my focus on my primary goal.

I incorporated feedback from my lo-fi prototype and changed certain features around, adding in a more robust flow for scheduling visits and activities.

Prototype

In my final prototype, I incorporated feedback from user testing as well as my insights from research and competitive analysis. The text was revised, the add to & remove from cart loop was improved to allow users more freedom in choosing when - and what - they want to book for their museum trip.

You can view the final prototype here!

Final Thoughts

I learned a lot during this project, from improving my Figma skills to gaining a better understanding of accessibility considerations for those using devices to aid navigation in apps. It was a labor of love, all things considered. My primary goal was to create an easy to understand method of engaging with many museum exhibits at once without sacrificing any emphasis on the gorgeous work done by the artists. Paying extra close attention to hierarchy helped me achieve this, and I was pleased to see users able to interact with my prototype intuitively. I am deeply grateful to all the individuals who helped me along the way, from providing critique to testing my prototypes.

If I had more time or was to change anything about Musings, I'd like to invest more time into filling out more sections of the theoretical museum that is Musings: maps, events, newsletters, and exhibits included with general admission. I was actually able to create a few explorations for a web-version of Musings that I'm proud of.