Adler Planetarium: ‘Your Terms’ Experience
Introduction
What if a pleasant online shopping experience could help people relive the memories they made at the Planetarium?
This study will focus primarily how to extend the Planetarium goers experience through the online experience. The research is based on various methods and the UI was built from the results collected through user interviews, surveys, and usability testing.
A typical trip to the museum is time-consuming, not very cost efficient, but familiar. We’ve all desired to explore or learn a thing or two from these museums, but as the days end grows near, the fatigue sets in.
The initial interview conducted was preliminary. It was important to understand how the museum worked and more focused, how the gift shop worked. She mentioned that people come in looking to see whats in there without even visiting the museum.
Through a survey, it turns out that 89% of museum goers are online shoppers. In that same survey 96% of users had reported that they’ve experienced a displeasing online shopping experience with majority of reasons regarding to navigation, product viewing, and lack of information transparency.
Why does this matter?
It matters because people go to the Planetarium for enjoyment. They go to the museum itself because they want to learn about something that they cant see from looking out their window. Sure, you can watch some pretty incredible documentaries, but according to Carolyn “Theres just something about being somewhere and everywhere you look information is placed at the perfect time, right where you need it to get your mind going.”
Which insights were gathered?
How might users compare or relate to their Planetarium experience in an even more positive light post-experience? I dug more into this through more in depth interviews.
This is what was discovered:
- The museum gift shop is widely considered an extension or part of the experience.
- Users typically view more than the specific item they went to the site for.
- The user often times views/purchases items that they were unaware were sold in the webspace they’re visiting.
- Users find that sites with little to no perceived structure spend more time scrolling, clicking, and back paging than actually finding items they’re looking for. This will ultimately cause the user to not engage with the website again due to the troublesome navigation.
- Users who buy items from the gift shop often buy more to add to a collection
This then led me to my primary insight:
How can Adler Planetarium allow users to explore the memories and reminders of their previous experience?
Adler Planetarium needed to find a way to allow users the comfort, freedom, and security throughout a the entire experience.
Comfort
Access to the online gift shop needed to be a smooth transition from the home screen to the shop home screen. This transition is necessary to gain the trust of the user. 80% of users were unaware of the Planetariums online gift shop due to its original architecture. Rebecca mentions in an interview that she, “can respect the fact that they’re not pushing the shop in my face to buy items, but I really would have no idea that it was there unless someone told me about it.”
Freedom
It was necessary to provide the user with useful and educational/informational data so the user can maintain confidence in purchasing. Gina said, “Im huge on reading about something or hearing what people have to say first; thats really the reason I buy things online, I just like feeling confident in my decision before buying.”
Security
It was also important to make sure that users felt that they always knew where they were within the site. This would allow them the feeling that things were being done on their own terms and that they weren’t being directed to specific items. Through an interview, Dan said, “Typically Ill leave a site when I don’t know where I am or it seems like the company is trying to withhold some kind of information in the checkout portion.”
After usability testing, more than 90% of users said that they were able to quickly and easily access the shop, products, and smoothly checkout and complete their order. Those same people said that they didn’t feel like they were “in the dark” throughout the process which later was defined as “just feeling lost or hitting the back button and expecting the previous page to pop up, but then having to basically restart the process you just went through to get to the product and then not being able to find it.”
Thank Yah!
This is the first case study I’ve ever written and my second Medium post as a UX Design student at General Assembly in Chicago. Although it may be rough around the edges, I hope you enjoyed reading about how I tried to address some of the current issues with the Planetariums online shopping experience. If you have ANY feedback, good or bad, please feel free to shoot me a message or email!
