HMOA
Class Project
The Problem
Lack of interaction between visitors and the art museum itself
1. Passively visit
2. Limited info resources during the pandemic
We decided to work on the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
We collected info on problems art museums facing during the pandemic that impact their visitors’ experience:
Literature review
What factors contribute to a good visit?
Field observation
What are current practices?
What issues do people encounter?
Education + Entertainment
Design a more engaging platform for visitors to better enjoy visits in the high museum of art even without art-related knowledge during the pandemic
Our Solution
An interactive prototype created in Figma, featuring 4 key functions
Design Sprint -- What is it?
1. AR scanning — art-info tag
Scan artworks to obtain info through AR
• AR pins with detailed art info
• General info through info section
2. AR scanning — comments
• Read other visitors’ comments
• Post own comments
• Send own reactions
3. Create sharable postcard
Create shareable card with text + pictures of the artworks
4. Notes & Bookmarks
• Part of the art-info section
• Save artworks to access info post-visit
• Add quick notes to document thoughts
Process
Team Members
Avery Ao
Holly Sun
Abhinav Thukral
Catherine Yang
Time
08/2021 - 12/2021
My role
UX Researcher, UX Designer
Tool
Figma, Miro, Notion
Context and User Needs
• How do visitors currently obtaining info?
• What types of info do they need?
• What do they do with the info?
• What are the main types of visitors and what are their unique problems?
• Other concerns during visits?
Online Survey
Semi-structured Interview
Contextual Inquiry
Affinity Diagram
Comparative Analysis
4 main user goals
Information
Needs for variety of art-related info
◦ Storytelling
◦ Back stage info
◦ Fun fact
◦ Expert’s comments and explain actions
◦ Look into details — limited by physical constrains
◦ Connections between artworks and artists
AR helps to convert the passive info reading into more active exploratory process
Socialization
Demands for communicating and expressing thoughts
Documentation
Needs for recording and documenting visits
Entertainment
Expectations to have more interactive and fun visiting experience
Persona
Empathy Map
Storyboard
📝 Check out detailed report on Context and User Need Research →
Design Ideas Generation
Sketch Concepts
We created 4 concept ideas:
AR scan for info
AR scan for comments
Artists chatbot
Diary collage
#1 Feedback Session
We conducted feedback sessions with 3 target users, presenting concepts and collected feedbacks on how each idea solves their problems.
Chat bot is confusing
◦ Users expect artist only offer info related to the artist themself
Chatbot isn't the first priority
◦ Chatbot storytelling is interactive and engaging, but it’s not the first priority, as info offered is repetitive with AR
◦ It could be an independent function with more potentials that requires more research and time to design
Things to consider
◦ Scan size of the artwork / sculpture
We decided to give up chatbot feature at this point.
Wireframe
Brainstorm session
We kept 3 key features:
1. AR scan for info: embed note-taking & bookmark
2. AR scan for comment: allow sending comments and reactions
3. Create postcards and diaries
#2 Feedback Session
We conducted feedback sessions with 4 target users, testing on tasks and having users talked-aloud about their thoughts.
• Lack of feedback and notification to indicate system status
• Phrases/ wording used should be more descriptive
• Accessibility concern
◦ Audio info
◦ Audio typing
Following adjustments were made based on feedback:
Modification 1: add feedback and notifications on user's actions
Modification 2: change the wording of confusing phrases
Modification 3: increase the level of accessibility
Evaluation and Validation
Prototype vr.1
The prototype is made within Figma.
Scan the artwork
Scan the artwork to access AR embedded features.
Menu items is available through the menu icon on top right.
AR information
After the system recognize the artwork, information about the artwork is presented through 2 forms:
1. Info pins on artworks
2. Swipe up for more info
Info pins offers detailed info related to elements within the artwork. Click to zoom into details, swipe left/right to switch between pins.
Swipe up offers general info about this art piece, including: overview, artist details, expert comments, related artworks.
AR Comment
Users can read and send their own comments related to the current artwork here.
Reactions can also be sent by clicking on the emoji icon.
Bookmarks & Notes
Users can bookmark artworks within the AR info page by clicking on the bookmark icon on bottom left. Bookmarks can be accessed through the pop up notification, or menu.
Users can also add notes to the current artwork, including text, image, video, and audio.
Within the My Bookmark section, users can access all related info & notes post-visit.
Postcards
Users can create sharable postcards using bookmarked artworks. Only one artwork could be used at a time.
Postcard is composed of the image of the artwork, a brief customizable text, time stamp and user ID. Different templates are available for various layouts.
Postcards could be shared or saved onto local devices.
Diaries
Users can create diary collage using bookmarked artwork information, comments, notes along with additional text, audio, pictures. Multiple artworks can be used for one diary.
Diaries are sharable, and can be saved onto local devices.
It can be edited at any time.
Evaluation Session #1 -- Expert-Based: Heuristic Evaluation
Goals
◦ Evaluate the overall functionality of the prototype
◦ Identify usability and accessibility issues of the design
◦ Test the ease of use of the prototype among expert users
◦ Assess the learnability of each features o the prototype
◦ Assess the error recovery features of the system
Who
3 Experts.
◦ Participants should be familiar with Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics
◦ Participants should have adequate knowledge of usability evaluation
◦ Participants should be comfortable using phones or computers to assess prototype
How
◦ Tasks
◦ Think-aloud
◦ Severity rating based on Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics
◦ Accessibility concerns
Tasks
1. Find the information of the art + bookmark the art and add notes
2. Read comments and send reactions
3. Find previous bookmarks and notes
4. Create and share a Postcard made from the artwork
Evaluation Session #2 -- User Based: Benchmark Task Test
Goals
◦ Understand if there is any confusion with using our system
◦ Understand whether our system is easy to use
◦ Check user’s likeliness of using our system and the reasons behind
◦ Check user’s expectations of our system and whether the current prototype satisfies these expectations
Who
5 users.
◦ All participants have visited the High Museum of Art in the recent year
◦ Participants may have some knowledge in art, but they are surely not art experts
How
◦ Tasks
◦ Think-aloud
◦ Post-task: Semi-structured interviews
Tasks
1. Scan artwork and find information
2. Bookmark artwork and add notes
3. Read comments and send reactions
4. Find previous bookmarks and notes
5. Create and share a Postcard made from the artwork
6. Create a diary of your visit
Design Recommendations
Make the menu available globally
Users expressed the needs to access menu items on all screens, instead of only in initial scanning screen.
Add "Recent Viewed" option
For users who need quick access to the latest viewed artwork's info, we add "recent viewed" option in case when they view other pages such as postcard but need going back to previous info page.
Adjust reaction & comment display
Instead of displaying comments partially, we decided to display all comments within the scrollable section, taking off the extra step to click for all comments.
Sending reactions now is faster by clicking on emojis on the right side directly. The number of comments is also shown on the top.
Add onboarding guide
A brief onboarding guide is added to give first-time users instructions on how to interact with the less-familiar AR scanning feature.
Take off Diary feature
Diary feature was found redundant, as:
1. Note + Postcard is sufficient for users to document their visit
2. Diary feature focuses more on post-visit experience, while our focus at this stage is during-visit experience
3. Diary alone could be a mature feature requiring more time to develop
Challenges & Something to Consider
• Collaborate with the High Museum of Art
• Actual implementation of the design requires large time & labors
• User base extends from mobile device users to older population
Final Prototype
