Challenge: The gallery visitors aim to be exposed to art, to learn about the artist and the time of history.

Solution: This app should provide a whole matrix of information about the art, help orientation in the physical space and store the users’ favourite art.

Site map

Chosen site map model was hierarchical. Here I found out that I can use plenty of online instruments even though on the first project we made it by hand. Old good way – they say. I found out that Canva can give a good one visual site map besides Figma, Adobe XD and Sketch.

Research

I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I’m designing for and their needs. For the primary user group identified through research art was a big part of their life and passion. The user problems included the confusing orientation in the museum area, missing text to support audio, limited content, no WiFi to use in the museum.

Pain points of the research

• The orientation in the museum area is confusing.
• Missing audio descriptions of the museum artworks.
• Not much information about the artists and their artwork.

So after I create the persona Maria, I was able to conduct and user journey too.

Starting the design

I’ve start with the Crazy 8. Super easy way to “scratch” my first ideas of the project.

Then came low-fi wireframes and fidelity prototypes.

Usability study

The I conduct 2 rounds of usability study. Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed refining.

Round 1

• Users don’t understand “Zoom” button.
• Search bar is not needed on inner pages.
• Overloaded artwork page.

Round 2

• The select tour button was hard to see.
• The whole artwork area should be clickable and movable to some direction.

Last steps

Refining the design and thinking about the accessibility were the last steps of this design project. My opinion about accessibility is that providing access to users who are vision impaired through adding alt text to images for screen readers could be a decision to think about, also icon to make navigation easier and audio descriptions for artworks provided to help vision impaired users.

Takeaways

Impact: With latest high fidelity designs the museum visitors can understand the whole matrix of the artwork and orient easily in the space.

What I learned: While designing the art history app, I learned that the first ideas for the app are only the beginning of the process. Usability studies and peer feedback influenced each iteration of the app’s designs.

Let’s connect!

Thank you for your time reviewing my work on the museum art gallery app!

If you’d like to see more or get in touch, my contact information is provided below blagadimitr@gmail.com