CREATING A MORE IMMERSIVE ART EXPERIENCE FOR ALL
Artible is a design-led project done in collaboration with Coursera's Google UX Design Certification program. Artible is a mobile application that provides audio tours for museums, designed to enhance the museum experience for visitors of all ages and interests.
As UX designer, I contributed to the overall design process and oversaw aspects related to product scoping, user flows, wireframes, prototyping, and usability testing.
Additionally, I conducted user research and synthesized research findings to produce evidence-based design outcomes.
To design an easy-to-use mobile application that museum visitors and people with visual impairments can use to learn more about art, creating a more enjoyable and educational experience for everyone.
4 weeks
Starting off, I asked myself a few initial questions. Who is our primary user? What kind of goals do they have? Why would someone want to use this application? Just how large of a scope do I want this project to be? After interviewing four participants to establish archetypes later on, it became evident that the goals they wanted to accomplish all fell within the same categories; learning more about art and having a more controlled and in-depth experience while at a museum.
Museum visitors want to have a deeper understanding of art and explore the museum at their own pace.
Initial interviews with users aimed to answer questions like: what excites you most about visiting an art museum? What frustrates you most about visiting an art museum? What would make an art tour engaging?
Plotting a list of possible features onto a graph helped me narrow down what was absolutely crucial for designing the application at first and would be built upon further down the road. The main draw of using this application is to be able listen to audio descriptions of art and read transcripts. We can help users reach this goal by creating interactive transcripts and clear, detailed audio descriptions.
In conducting my research, I analyzed the 4 most popular apps surrounding the art/museum space. Some apps did not offer an audio description on all available art pieces. Other apps offered guided tours, but did not allow users to move freely within the tour. Almost all the apps did not have a transcript for available audio descriptions. This highlighted various areas of opportunity for my app.
Design a platform that allows users to easily find, listen to, or read about art at a given museum?
To answer this, I first created an outline of the main user flow. Then based on the user flow, I made my best assumptions to try identifying other pain points and usability features that provided opportunities for my design.
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The first step in designing the app was planning the home page. Utilizing my prioritization plot and main user flow, I started analyzing different UI to design the best possible way a user can find, search, and discover museums and content on the app. The MET, The Art Institute of Chicago, and The Dallas Museum of Art were my inspiration.
Next, I explored completing a task flow. My goal here was to ideate through ways the app can display vast amounts of sections within a museum in a way that didn't feel overwhelming to the user. I sketched through different ways a user can quickly and efficiently find an artwork at any given museum.
Then, I created digital wireframes and a low-fidelity prototype for an initial usability study. Here, I opted for a more recognizable media player design, similar to Spotify to create a sense of familiarity. I was curious to see how users felt about navigating the app to find a museum or artwork.
Based on the usability study responses and feedback from peers, I continuously iterated my designs over the span 3 weeks and made 3 major improvements.
The final high-fidelity prototype presented clean user flows for finding and listening to artworks to provide a more in-depth and enjoyable visitor experience that is accessible for all.
This was my first-ever UX project (yay)! I am extremely grateful to have been through an entire UX process so I can see what it is actually like. One of my interests is art and I love visiting museums so this truly was a passion project I enjoyed working on.
On that note, a few things I learned:
1. Iterate as much as you can. In the beginning stages, I explored so many different options to try to find the best solution for museum visitors to search and find a museum and specific artworks- I ended up "restarting" my project 3 times with over 9 iterations of my Figma file to make sure the app was designed with intention.
2. Experiencing the problem first hand is the best research. In an effort to empathize with users, (and as a reason to go to a museum) I visited the Dallas Museum of Art on a busy weekend and asked visitors in the cafe if an audio-tour app would be something they would use. This experience allowed me to get different perspectives on a museum visit and how people would like to enjoy art.
3. Be insight-driven. Designing an audio-tour app meant keeping accessibility a main priority. Understanding accessibility concerns while visiting a museum was important when designing key features of the app. Not to mention- I have a better sense to obey WCAG standards next time!