Art Gallery

Art Gallery

The app features a one stop shop for everything needed surrounding a leading art gallery. This consists of information regarding opening hours, directions and parking, upcoming events and exhibitions, a learning portal for various ages groups and level of art understanding to gain greater insights into the works, guided tours through your phone, and a connection networking hub for people to communicate about art and a space for information regarding employment within the art world.

The Problem

The art gallery experience for many can be an almost intimidating experience due to a perceived lack of knowledge and finding the time to visit, with a busy schedule!

The Goal

To facilitate and enhance the entire experience of visiting a local Art Gallery. We want art lovers of all ages to have meaningful, educational and engaging experiences, and to increase overall customer satisfaction through the app.

Solution

Competitive analysis

During the early stages of the design process, I conducted a competitive analysis of two local and one international art galleries / museums to gain insight on what the established competition was doing well and what could be improved

Particular attention was paid to the first impressions of the competing apps, interactions (features, accessibility, user flow, navigation), the visual design, and the content (tone & descriptiveness)

User Research

Two personas were also developed along with their problem and goal statements and journey maps. 

A previous assumption that the development of this app would only focus on a narrow set of users was challenged after conducting this research, and the opportunity for the scope to broaden to include a varied user group was recognised.

Pain points

Personas

User journey map

The goal was to provide an app that would cater to a varied user base of many ages and interests, while making the entire experience straightforward, engaging, and overall - easy

Starting the design

Keeping user pain points in mind, I next sketched out paper wireframes of each screen of the app - prioritising abalance between fast, easy navigation and being informative enough in regards to the exhibits and art information

Digital wireframes

The choice of what first information to display was deemed very important, the first things users would notice and interact with.

Digital wireframes

The choice of what first information to display was deemed very important, the first things users would notice and interact with.

Usability study: findings

With five participants I conducted unmoderated, remote usability studies and gathered insights from each user. The criteria involved in selection were: Participants are anyone who has visited an Art Gallery or Museum at least once in the past 6 months, and participants should be between the ages of 18 and 72.

Users were asked to perform tasks on a low fidelity prototype.

Due to the amount of options and information on the homepage some users felt overwhelmed.

Progressive disclosure and information hierarchy should be practiced within the homepage to increase clarity and flow

Users wanted

Final screens

Figma

Accessibility considerations

Takeaways

This app aims to facilitate the love and appreciation of art by enhancing the experience of visiting your local art gallery. Rounds of user testing inspired design iterations and positive interactions and flow were seen in usability studies

I learned the great depth involved in creating engaging and memorable experiences withinvthe art world, along with the varied needs of different user groups

Conclusion / Key Takeaways / Next Steps

I would like to expand into the multitude of possible user flows within the app and add more functionality to the app

Exploring and updating the UI design could be beneficial to the overall success of the app

Conduct additional user research on the high fidelity iterations of the app to gain important insights and recommendations for improvements. Broadening the scope to test with a more varied user group in the future could prove to be extremely helpful in the continuing development of the app.

Expand the project into a responsive web app and tablet design.

Incorporate an augmented reality section to the app that would allow for on-screen information about artists, current exhibits, and gallery facilities.

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