GalleryPal

Year

2023

Role

UX DESIGNER / SOLO CREATOR

Brief

An unobtrusive mobile app that helps museum and art gallery visitors explore solo and deepen their appreciation of art

Overview

Problem

Visitors to museums and art galleries don’t have easy, straightforward ways to learn more about the art on display. This frustrates them, because lack of knowledge prevents them from appreciating the art on a deeper level.

Process

GalleryPal was born of a week-long creativity sprint. I was given a real-world problem to be solved with a mobile app, and I followed a logical, regimented design process resulting in a user-centered product ready to build.

Solution

GalleryPal is a mobile app that helps users easily and independently explore museums and art galleries and deepen their appreciation of works of art, using unobtrusive learning methods that enhance the art-viewing experience.

Research

The Visitor Perspective

As part of the sprint, I was provided certain research materials, including interviews with visitors to museums and art galleries. I identified commonalities in the interviews to help pinpoint major needs to address.

Visitor Traits

  • Typically want to explore on their own, not in a tour group

  • Want to appreciate art on a deeper level

  • Need context about art to reach a deeper appreciation

  • Are frustrated when there aren’t convenient ways to get context

“I like to form my own opinion about art, but it can be hard to do that when I don’t really know anything about the artist, or what their intentions were in creating the work.”

— Museum/Art Gallery Visitor

The Tour Guide Perspective

The sprint materials also included an interview with a museum tour guide about her interactions with visitors. This offered further insights into visitor needs.

Insights

  • Visitors need expert guidance to appreciate art on a deeper level

  • Deep appreciation of art involves forming personal connections with it

  • Forming personal connections with art can be highly fulfilling

“At the end of the day ... artwork is really meant to also sort of understand yourself in an interesting way.”

— Museum Tour Guide

User Persona

The exercise materials included a simple user persona meant to focus my thinking on the needs of potential users of the app I was about to design.

The Budding Art Enthusiast

Young junior art director in New York City

Behavior

  • Enjoys going to museums by herself

  • Prefers seeing new exhibits

  • Prefers not researching art ahead of time

Goal

A simple way of learning more about art on her own while in a museum so she makes the most of her visit

Inspiration

Considering how best to design an app to help the user persona achieve her goal, I consulted other apps for interacting with art. Three were especially relevant.

National Gallery of Art

Museum Map App

  • Facilitates exploration of the museum by orienting users in the building

  • Describes rooms and art

  • Lists “must see” art

  • Offers text and audio descriptions of art

Smartify

Art Identification App

  • Accesses the user’s camera to identify art

  • Offers interactive explorations of art

  • Offers shop with items from many institutions

DailyArt

Art Learning App

  • Offers interactive explorations of art

  • Links to related or recommended art

  • Links to further reading

  • Allows users to curate lists of favorite art

Design

Crazy Eights

Drawing ideas from these three app types, I used the “crazy eights” technique to brainstorm eight very different ways to help the user persona achieve her goal. My sketches ranged from a practical, if dull, solution inspired by Wikipedia to a more fanciful one inspired on the augmented reality game Pokémon GO.

Choosing the Best

The solutions I’d generated varied widely in terms of their creativity and practicality for institutions to implement. I wanted to design an app that was engaging for users but could also readily be turned into a reality. I chose to pursue the solution that seemed most balanced and began sketching the major screens.

Storyboards

Next I needed to prepare a thorough map of how users would progress through the app so I could understand the various interactions I had to design.

Moodboard

I had a sense of the app’s architecture, but I still needed decide on a visual look, so I gathered imagery reflecting key ideas that the app should convey to users.

Ideas

  • Self-directed enrichment

  • Self-reliance

  • Discovery

  • Friendly guidance

Imagery suggested muted colors and simple, unobtrusive visuals that wouldn’t distract users from the art in front of them.

UIs

Prototype

Using the storyboards and moodboard as guides, I built an interactive prototype of the main app screens in Figma to test with potential users and gather feedback.

Map

A map of the current museum/gallery, which serves as a home screen

Key Features

  1. Building/floor selector

  2. Search box for finding spaces and art

  3. Buttons that reveal space details and directions

  4. “Locate me” button that resets the map to the user’s current location

Must See

A list of important or popular works of art in the current museum/gallery

Key Features

  1. Building/floor selector that shows art by location

  2. Search box for finding art

  3. Buttons that open the map and show directions

Examine

An augmented-reality camera feed that highlights details of art in front of the user

Key Features

  1. Header with basic details of the art

  2. Dialogue box with brief text about the art

  3. Bold outlines to focus the user’s attention

  4. “Add to favorites” button

  5. “Audio guide” button

Favorites

A list of works of art selected by the user to revisit later and explore further

Functionality

  1. Building/floor selector that shows favorited art by location

  2. Search box for finding favorited art

  3. Buttons that expand sections to reveal a location button plus links to literature and merchandise

Validation

Usability Tests

I recruited five people, ages 20 to 40, and gave them tasks to perform with the prototype. Test subjects had varying degrees of familiarity with museums and art galleries, some identifying as art lovers and some not.

Key Findings

  • Participants successfully completed all tasks, validating the design

  • Participants appreciated how the app facilitated access to information, and they requested access to even more

  • Participants appreciated how they could curate a list of favorite works of art, and they requested additional ways of customizing the app

“Being able to have a guide like this in your own hands ups accessibility.”

— Test Subject

I now have not only a design and user data confirming that the design is a viable solution, but I also have ideas for how to refine the design.

Prototype

Insights

A clear process is essential

Particularly during a creativity sprint, a designer may feel compelled to show off their creativity or, fixating on the time crunch, to default to whatever existing patterns come to mind first, even if they aren’t ideal. Mapping out a design process helps the designer focus on user needs rather than themselves.

The app itself isn’t the user’s goal

It’s tempting to make something glamorous when designing an app, especially one related to art. But if the point of the app is to facilitate action in the physical world, then the app shouldn’t try to compete for the user’s attention.

Familiar patterns help users

Especially for an app like GalleryPal, it’s important not to force users to learn new patterns unless absolutely necessary. Incorporating existing ones into a design can help users pick up an app and start using it straightaway.