The museum marketing director was looking for a way to draw in visitors and get them to engage with the museum and community deeper. My partner and I had creative freedom to discover and develop a solution that was elegant, efficient, and simple for users that would solve business and marketing goals for the museum. It was very important for us to learn the visitor's mental model when they went to a museum. It's unlike simply utilizing a mobile device or computer and we attempted to blend physical space with a digital experience.

Initial User Data

We met with museum personnel and gathered information they had about the museum that could challenge us in our design for the future:

• Contemporary art
• Free admission
• Membership & newsletter sign up
• Older user demographic
• Marketing goals for short term membership signup and future retention
• Unknown remote visitor frequency
• Existing user database CRM

After gathering the data from the museum stakeholders, we conducted a discovery session to create a UX plan to validate ideas and to determine our plan of action based on our time frame (10 weeks).

UX Plan

There were major challenges ahead of us to keep aware of entering this project. That's what made it unique and exciting to develop the physical and digital world together.

• Challenges
• Increase membership value (with free admission)
• Increase visitor engagement
• Improve welcome reception
• Aspirations
• Users/visitors feel inspired by the museum
• Guiding Principles
• Support for Programs
• Increase participation (donations, more visitors, memberships)
• Activities
• Streamline membership signup
• Redesign physical space with digital integration

User Data and Userflows

It was necessary to visit the museum to gather research and discover how users were interacting with the challenge areas. We talked with museum volunteers about their experience and pain points, interviewed visitors about how they felt about a check in process and what information they would provide, and walked the museum to observe flow and discover opportunities for physical kiosk locations.

Wireframing & Prototype

During this stage, I sketched out many various versions of the prototype I wanted to build. As I started the sketches, I kept learning more myself about the functionality of the app, and reiterated on the spot. The user flow in this app is extremely important and needs to be absolutely clear to the end user because it can be such an immersive function of their daily lives. While prototyping this app, it gave me a great sense of finding the value to a user and I redid many steps along the way to make it more streamlined and less cluttered.

User Testing

Michael and I did some initial user testing with a group and got great feedback. A few of the pages were confusing with switching the location of information without interactive elements to transition between screens. We adjusted and kept the wireframe consistant until we can incorporate interactive functionality. We presented and had the client run through the prototype and gather information they wanted to incorporate or had questions at this point. They enjoyed the simple interface, and had no trouble getting through all the steps in a timely manner.

The checkout process for membership was exactly what they were looking for and it incorporated a form that was paired down and led users along the process in a much more intuitive way through each screen instead of an overloaded page with form fields.

Refine, Retest, Present

After testing, we circled back and made adjustments and started looking into the physical space itself to house a digital portal. Michael drew out 3 options, and we recommended to go with one of the iterations that would work well with the flow of traffic within the area. The current space would have to be altered dramatically to accomodate the kiosks, but would help act as a greeting visitors to the museum and get them engaging right away.

We presented our research findings, userflows, and prototyped our solution to the museum's stakeholders that helps solve their goals of growing their community and keeping an unobtrusive, elegant look that can accomplish multiple activities.