UNBOXED VISITOR EXPERIENCE
Client Industry: Non-Profilt | My Role: Research Lead
UPDATE: The app has been launched at the museum since February, 2016.
NEWS: Unboxed: A new app at The Warhol
Context
This project was part of the Masters of Human-Computer Interaction Capstone Project Course at Carnegie Mellon University. It comprised an end-to-end product development cycle for our client, The Andy Warhol Museum. Our 4-person team aimed to design and develop new ways of interacting with the museum collection.
My Role as Research Lead
I designed and conducted our user studies and usability testings. I sketched out the early visions after the museum visitor studies and made prototypes for testing during the design phase of the project.
Project Highlight: Creative Activities
We designed a series of custom research methods combining sketch, card sorting, and storytelling. Twenty five creative sessions were conducted at the museum to collect both visitors’ demographic and psychographic data. Participants started off drawing their path through the museum, followed by annotating their maps with small tokens. Lastly, participants were encouraged to tell their stories about what they saw, heard, felt, or did along the way in the museum.
Creative session with a museum patron
Project Highlight: Affinity Diagrams
We generated over 950 affinity notes representing information from each of our research domains. From these notes we crafted three affinity diagrams for visitor, staff, and extramural research. This week-long process brought forth important themes in the data, capturing insights from all team members. Through a comprehensive synthesis process, we condensed our top-level findings into 6 Big Ideas, or visions for the future of the Warhol visitor experience.
Early Visions
15-Minute Fame
Gallery attendants are given opportunities to guide visitors on a 15-minute tour of their own artwork.
Psychedelic Sense Box
Visitors receive nested boxes at the start of their trip. The sense box provides new perspectives for every floor.
Late-Night Art Hackathon
The first-floor lobby is the art factory, visitors entering the museum are surrounded by the creative atmosphere, which will build community through hands-on
Museum Mementos
It not only opens the opportunities for people having chance to discuss the art but also strengthens the social dynamic among visitors.
Ideation Process
Project Highlight: Design Evaluation
We first tested two paper prototypes with 13 visitors to determine which model blended with gallery spaces. After synthesizing visitors’ feedback on the paper prototypes, we built an interactive prototype and tested it with another 11 visitors. We found the application was easy to follow and elucidated visitor expectations for artifacts at the end of their visit. We then enhanced the interactive prototype and tested with 7 visitors in order to observe how visitors paced through museum floors with the interactive prototype. Finally, we created a high fidelity prototype to represent our refined design, and then tested it with another 4 visitors. We found visitors were not sure how to “finish” their collection, and adding an external hook to the app will clarify application goal. As we moved forward, we added an introduction screen that hints at the final artifact visitors can take home. We also highlighted the beginning state in the app to the visitors.
Testing with paper prototypes
Museum visitors testing the design concept with a paper prototype
Testing with Axure prototype
Museum visitors were given the prototype to be taken with them while browsing in the galleries.