Gallery Pal
Developed over the course of a week-long design sprint, this digital product attempts to improve the user experience of gallery goers.
Enhancing the Art Gallery Experience
A GV style design sprint to create a MVP that helps gallery attendants learn more about the art they are viewing.
Duration: 5 days
Key Skills: Ideation, Sketching, Storyboarding, Wireframing, HI-FI designs, Rapid Prototyping Using AI (Figma Make), Testing
The Problem:
A collective of galleries in New York City have noticed a troubling trend: while their ticket sales have been acceptable among tourists, there is a lack of engagement and return visits among NYC area locals.
After conducting some user surveys and interviews, they found that people who attend art shows at galleries and museums want to learn more about the art they are viewing. However, too often they are presented with vast amounts of text that can feel overwhelming. They don’t want to feel like they are in a college level art history class.
“I like the autonomy of (self checkout). I like that I can bag things the way I want it bagged. And I typically don't do huge grocery trips. So it's not like super inconvenient for me to use it.”
-Jeff on the problems he encounters when trying to learn about art at a museum
But What If:
Instead of presenting users with pages of text they have to read on a plaque or on Wikipedia, we design a digital product that allows them to explore a piece or an artist in bite size chunks, with the option to get more into certain details as they wish.
And So:
I created a rough version of an app that lets users explore the work in a gallery free of cognitive overload.
Key Features
In-gallery Scanning:
Since users want to learn more about the art in front of them, I designed a way for them to scan a QR code or enter a code to pull up information on a piece
Progressive Disclosure:
Since users expressed that they often felt overwhelmed with the information they were presented with, I used progressive disclosure to present several topics on one visual chunk.
Ability to Create a “Favorites” Folder:
Since users expressed a strong desire to learn more about the artists who created the works, I allowed users to add artists to their “Favorites” folder, enabling them to receive notifications when the artist will have another show in the area.
The Research
By taking a deep dive into the needs of the users and the pain points they were experiencing at the self-checkout kiosks, it is my hope that Supermart Sidekick can give users the confidence to grocery shop on their terms.
#1
Users don’t necessarily want the structure and wealth of information offered in a guided tour, but they do sometimes want to learn more about certain art and artists.
“I don’t really enjoy group tours because I like to do my own thing... but sometimes I listen in to learn a few facts about the artist, or the work itself.
-Joohee Mather on issues she has had with a specific self-checkout kiosk
“I really like to form my own opinion about art, but it’s hard to do that when I don’t know anything about the artist or their intentions when creating their work.”
-Jane on not being able to fully understand an artwork without related information about the artist and their insights.
#2
Users are not given significant background on the artist or the artist’s insights on an artwork.
#3
Users find that despite doing some brief initial research on an artist or a work of art that they intend to view at a museum or gallery, they usually always find something new they want to learn more about.
“I usually do a little research before my visit, but I always find a new artwork that catches my eye that I didn’t read about before hand.”
-Claire on not being able to fully prepare beforehand when attending a gallery show.
Lighting Demo
I used the method used by GV to gain insights on how to solve my design problem. I did this by looking at digital products that already exist that are trying to solve similar problems.
I really like the way the Apple Music app uses progressive disclosure to introduce a new artist without overwhelming you with information. Navigating to related artists and genres is easy and intuitive. The user just needs to press the back button at the top right of the screen to navigate back to the previous page. Also, I love that the user can very easily add and artist to your favorites folder or add their songs to the user’s playlist.
For my second source of inspiration, I chose the Audible App. Much like Apple Music, it uses progressive disclosure and a clean UI that allows users to easily explore a title or an author. I also really like the way they use chips to show related genres the user might like to explore.
Finally, I chose the Shazam App as my third source of inspiration. I really like the way that it allows users to identify a song that is playing in the background. I think this could be a useful feature for my app, as it would allow users to quickly identify a piece of art that they are viewing. I also like how the user simply needs to navigate back to the homescreen to identify a new song.
User Journey Map
It was now time to figure out the most critical red route my potential users might navigate when interacting with the product
Sketching and Storyboarding
For this design sprint, it was important to get a lot of ideas out quickly to try to identify the best possible solution.
The first step was to sketch out a few possibilities for the most vital screen of my user journey map.
The next step was to storyboard the user journey map, making sure to highlight the possible interactive UI elements i would use.
Hi-Fi Screens
Now that I had mapped out the main UX of the red-route, I was able to fully develop the UI elements. During this faze of the design process, I also added some features that dealt with coupon verification.
Defining and Designing Edge Cases
It was also important to explore possible errors that might occur for the user while using the app in a gallery.
Rapid Prototyping Using Figma Make
For the sake of time, I used AI prompts within Figma Make to generate an interactive prototype that could be tested by potential users.
Testing and Iterations
My favorite part, it was time to test out my product. After 2 rounds of testing, I made some key changes to the UX and UI.
In Conclusion
It is my hope that this sprint set me up to design a solution that would both boost ticket sales for stakeholders and improve user experience for gallery goers.