Gallery Pal Design Sprint
Monday, November 13 to Friday, November 17, 2024
Bitesize UX Guidelines, Adobe XD
As the sole undertaker of this 5-day project, my roles consisted of
UX Researcher: synthesizing findings and conducting user testing interviews.
UX Designer: ideating, sketching, wireframing, prototyping.
Introduction
This case study documents a Five-Day Design Sprint in partnership with a startup called GalleryPal. This project is a riff on the Google Ventures Design Sprint optimized for a solo designer. I started with a design brief and synthesized user research data–user personas and an interview with a gallery expert–through the collaboration between Bitesize UX and Springboard.
The Problem
Museums and Galleries are great spaces to attain more cultural knowledge. However, they don’t always provide the full picture about specific pieces unless you speak to curators or historians–people who are almost always hard to find. Regardless of one’s familiarity with the show, artist, or movement, people always want to know more but don’t have an accompanying resource to help them learn more.
The Solution
GalleryPal is a startup looking to improve the overall experience of viewing art exhibitions in museums and galleries. Patrons encounter a series of pain points that prevent them from having a complete art experience, problems a digital guided exhibition tour could ease.
Constraints
I executed this project using a 5-day design sprint structure, limiting the time spent researching, ideating, prototyping, and testing. I could not expand the primary and secondary research already assigned, design beyond my original user flow scope, or conduct a second round of interviews to test my edited designs.
Monday - Mapping
To assess the problem and find the best solution, I reviewed the common stress points and watched an interview with a gallery expert. These resources from Bitesize UX catalyzed several maps to discern which solution was best.
Our Target Audience is Angela, who
is a museum regular who attends to see new work.
She enjoys the exhibitions but wants galleries to provide more information.
She is overwhelmed by doing self-guided research through reading books and articles.
She wants to maximize the educational impact of her visit by accessing information while looking at the art.
Once I determined my key user’s needs, I mapped out a simple user flow that prioritized their main stress point.
Tuesday - Competitor Analysis
Before sketching out potential solutions, I wanted to understand the current scope of solutions available to people like Angela. I found five platforms that I hypothesized would aid the stress point. Google Arts and Culture, the Perez Art Museum Miami webpage, the Instagram Explore Page, the Milwaukee Art Museum webpage, and the KMAC Contemporary Art Museum Mobile Guide.
Each of these platforms allows museum and gallery patrons to access a varying degree of additional information. They provide examples of successful information layouts. However, the layouts can display more research and relevant information, deepening the educational experience of the user.
Tuesday - Sketching
This day is about scouting your options for a solution. First, we conducted a comparative analysis to check out how other platforms perform. Next, we created eight sketches under a tight time limit to see what we could brainstorm after seeing external iterations.
Based on the research, the most important screen for the user is the exhibition’s tour page. This screen is the place that the user will interact with the most to access specific pieces and additional information about the artist and historical context. This Crazy 8s sketch shows the different variations of the “show” or exhibition’s page. I played with floating layouts like PAMM’s interface and more structured visual layouts like KMAC’s Mobile Guide and the Google Arts and Culture app.
The three-panel solution sketch is a snapshot of the user flow that addresses the initial problem. It centers on the exhibition tour page, which is preceded by the exhibition overview page and followed by the artist’s overview page.
Even though the tour has a structured layout, I wanted to give the users the freedom to choose how they view the exhibition and its additional information. This goal is why the topic scroll page is a vital component of the interface.
Wednesday - Design Decision
GalleryPal is a mobile interface that seeks to provide a holistic educational experience for museum and gallery patrons interested in the humanities. At the surface, it should be approachable to beginners, but more advanced art enthusiasts should find deeper connections by clicking on features that indicate there is more to learn.
A guided tour is the best way to educate a museum or gallery patron without making them do all of the work. It mirrors real-life solutions museums have to make an experience more legible. The critical components of my design not only mirror the real-life solution of a guided tour, but also provide the patron with flexibility to see different exhibitions or galleries, scroll through the tour without feeling stuck, and find more information without being forced to read or listen.
Thursday - Prototyping
After spending the past three days empathizing, defining, and ideating, it was finally time to prototype the design solution for GalleryPal. My previous experiences using quick prototyping tools proved more difficult than creating a mockup with Figma. To familiarize myself with a different design tool, I chose to create my mockups in Adobe XD.
Turning sketches into interactive screens on XD was quick and created a more legible space that would be easier for user testing. Because I was familiar with wireframing, I quickly created a low-fidelity prototype. It does not have the characteristics of a perfected branding or style guide but establishes a clear hierarchy and displays consistent screen design.
Friday - Testing and Validation
To evaluate my design, I visited a museum and recruited five users. The users were a mix of employees and museum patrons who were free to complete the test. While the museum patrons varied from regulars to vacation-only visitors, the employees mainly worked in the curatorial and visitor services departments. This blend of users was perfectly suited to test the interface since they are either the ideal users or experts who can point out potential points of confusion.
Reflection
The design sprint was a great way to evaluate my capabilities as a designer with a limited amount of time. While months to years-long projects with dedicated teams and researchers offer more successful high-fidelity products, the design sprint’s compressed timeline extracted the bursts of creativity I need to complete a project. For my future projects, I think I will use design sprints to work through specific components of my interface so that I am not overwhelmed by a daunting task.
In this specific project, it seems like my solution was successful overall but needed some organizational and copywriting changes to have a clear flow. This outcome makes sense since the design sprint does not focus on the details but instead forces the designer to create interesting compositions that serve as a quick and creative solution. For more successful future sprints, I will think more about the wording and screen orders as I design the interface.