Digital Museum
Digital Museum is an online platform that was developed as a part of the DesignSpot School program, provided by Epam Systems. The DesignSpot is a 2-stage program aimed at enhancing the skills of UI/UX designers through a series of projects.
Out of over 600 applicants, I was selected as one of the 50 designers for the first phase and then as one of the 25 designers for the second phase of the program.
The first stage of the program was focused primarily on interface design, while the second stage aimed to enhance participants' UX design skills by providing an opportunity to collaborate with other designers and work on a more complex project from scratch.
In this case study, I showcase my work from the second phase of the program, where I was part of a small international team of designers and mentors. Our team developed an online platform for a digital museum, which allows users to view artworks and cultural artifacts from partner museums.
Client
Role
Team
Year
Problem
- Based on research made by Unesco, with the onset of the pandemic, 90% of museums have closed their doors to the public. However, people still want to visit exhibitions and study art.
- Long lines make people's experience of visiting museums less pleasant.
- It is difficult for people with disabilities to visit museums in person.
- Tickets to popular museums are expensive. Not all people can afford to buy them.
“The main part of museum expositions is kept in funds and exhibited periodically. Therefore, a simple visitor does not always have access to them.”
Solution
Our mission is to make art accessible to everyone. We have developed a platform that provides users with 24/7 access to museum exhibitions and galleries, helps search for artwork information and allows you to buy tickets to physical museums avoiding long lines.
Process
Our approach
1. Discovery
Kick-off meeting
We have conducted a kick-off meeting with the stakeholders and the team. We have planned our work, discussed our timeline and identified the risks associated with this project.
Competitive analysis
The competitive analysis allowed us to quickly dive into the subject area and understand what design and functionality options we could have.
02. User research
Through desk research, we were able to come up with several hypotheses around the solution, how the platform would function, and what customers need. To validate or invalidate these hypotheses we chose a survey and an in-depth interview.
95
participants across 17 cities surveyed
5
people were selected for in-depth interviews
What we found out
- Main reasons that stop people from visiting museums are: lack of time (43.6%), pricey tickets (25.5%), long lines (16%).
- 77% of respondents prefer not to use the services of a guide, but to watch the exhibition on their own.
- Only 30.8% of respondents showed interest in augmented reality features.
- 3 out of 5 participants mentioned that they have a need to discuss their emotions and thoughts with friends when visiting museums.
- People like an algorithm that suggests activities based on their interests.
“I tried to look at 3D virtual tours, but the computer was always very slow.”
Personas
Based on the research results, we have identified 2 personas:
- an art lover and designer Maria
- a history teacher Dmitry.
CJM
Using the collected data from previous steps we built 2 customer journey maps, where were displayed the main problems and the solutions to them. It helped us to understand real users' needs and their motivation.
Prioritization
We have prioritized all the features on the effort matrix and realized that we definitely need to include:
- audio descriptions of exhibits and exhibitions
- tags by art directions
- an algorithm for searching for current exhibitions
03. Ideation
MVP
Developing an MVP helped us to identify the main direction of further work, fix errors, and avoid unnecessary features within the product.
User Flow
We decided that we would take 2 scenarios as a basis:
- viewing an exhibit in a free online exhibition.
- purchasing access to a paid exhibition.
Hi-fi wireframes & Prototype
Based on User Flows and information architecture, we have developed a highly detailed interactive prototype that displays the main steps of scenarios for viewing an online exhibition and buying tickets to a museum.
04. Usability testing
After the clickable prototype was created, we moved on to the next step – remote moderated usability testing.
Our team wrote a testing plan which contained 7 tasks and follow-up questions. The respondents performed tasks and simultaneously voiced their actions and thoughts.
After the end of the tests, we checked recorded videos, noted comments and issues found during different steps of performing tasks. All discovered problems were prioritized based on Impact–effort matrix.
Main problems
- It is not clear where are paid and where are free exhibitions.
- There is no indicator that the purchase was successful.
- No prices for paid exhibitions.
- It is not clear for what period the exhibition was bought.
- No clickable links to sources in articles.
“It is not entirely clear for what period I get access to the exhibition.”
We fixed all the issues and after the second testing iteration, the prototype was ready for final development.
05. Visual Design
Final Design
The high-fidelity prototype can be viewed here.
UI Kit
Defining all the basic elements in advance helped to design fast and consistent throughout the project.
You can also watch a video presentation of this project here. It's in Russian, but you can watch it with subtitles :)