The design of V&A mused
The V&A asked me to work on a project focussed at 10–14 year olds (Gen A), leveraging my substantial experience designing and building complex projects with and for young people.
I worked closely with the V&A’s in-house Digital team and a core team of specialist contractors to deliver a thorough examination of how 10–14 year olds (Gen A), might be introduced to the V&A in a fun and joyful way through art, design, fashion, music, gaming and creativity.
Services delivered
Art direction / Design / Branding /User research & user labs / Service design / Information architecture / Interface design / UX design / Provenance / Marketing design
METHODOLOGY
This project benefited from having the time, budget and stakeholder confidence to allow us to carry out a comprehensive discovery phase. We started with a candid and forensic look at the problems we were trying to solve and how we might engage our potential users. These included:
Problem statements
To avoid immediately jumping to assumptions and solutions and to plan the work effectively, we defined a clear set of overarching problem statements and hypotheses. These were edited and adjusted as the project developed.
User research
We tested many times with a diverse range of young people at key points in the project where it was vital for us to understand behaviours and to test our assumptions. Our testers had diverse backgrounds with varied digital literacies.
User lab #1
We’d identified from our problem statements that we needed to understand user mechanics at play and the emotional attraction to quizzes. We wanted to know more about our potential users and their behaviours. We prepared tasks, interviewed then observed and documented the outcomes.
User lab #2
We asked testers to perform card sorting exercises so that we could observe what they understood about the canons: art, design, fashion, gaming etc as well as what other interests they had that we hadn’t thought about.
User lab #3
By the time we were ready to test for the 3rd time we had a tangible part-built site for our testers to sample. This time we wanted to know if the mechanics of our quizzes were understood. The best feedback helped me improve the transactional journeys.
User lab #4
Now that the majority of the site structure was built, we needed to know if our testers could effectively comprehend the content, then navigate and travel through the whole site? At all times, did they understand: Where they were? What they could do there? What else was relevant nearby?
Trend spotter reports
Each month we’d receive a research report consisting of opinions collated from a group of slightly older teenagers so that we could tap into their likes and dislikes, their beliefs and where and how they collated information in their lives.
Information architecture
We knew the canons (Fashion, Music, Gaming, Design, Films & shows, Random) and the content types (Trivia, Challenge or Personality quizzes, Top 10 lists or pre-existing V&A factual content that we could repurpose) and from there I could work out the hierarchy: the fixed taxonomies, and if there were slow-moving categories and fast-moving topics.
Service design
Early on, I mapped the service design front-of-house and back-of-house user journeys and scenarios with the team. By mapping the production process we pinpointed a potential overhead in quizz production and in particular sourcing images, making the promos, recording the meta data, copyright, general provenance and maintenance of the image database.
LOOK AND FEEL
This specific project would sit outside the main V&A masterbrand but would adhere to some basic tenets: typography, brand rules etc. It wasn’t attached to any specific V&A venue, geographically located so understanding ‘how much V&A’ to inject into the design would take provocation.
The look was to “age up” Gen A rather than appeal to the younger end of the market and what missing service it aimed to provide and to be more of an entertainment rather than educational proposition.
Mapping the landscape
I started by immersing myself into the minds of 14 year olds. For once, I could legitimately spend time on TikTok and Instagram searching for viral trends, looking at Minecraft, Roblox, Lego, watching TV and online shows, trawl illustration websites for trends aimed at teenagers plus think about what we’d already learnt from user testing and trend spotter reports.
When mapping images I noticed the emergence of a lot of bright colours and vector graphics. The more mature; the less rounded or 3-dimensional. The more entertaining; the brighter the colours. I now had a fundamental idea for what might appeal to young people.
Inspiration came from the nature of craft at V&A museums. I started to lean into collage, layers, the textures of Riso prints, dot matrices, half tones. Two specific things had stuck out from my research: the textures from the end credits for the Disney TV series Extraordinary and just about every colour in just about every post from Nobody Sausage.
A sudden explosion of colour and texture ensued once I imagined what a 14 year old might do if they were let loose with Photoshop. How could I manipulate images in a fun unconventional way? How might I mix shapes and textures with: items from the V&A collections, from library images, from AI generated images?
Through more trial and error and design provocations, I produced a defined look and feel. More trial and error and several provocations later I had a clear idea which content types would receive this new look and feel and which wouldn’t. This included rules around how quiz question images would be treated differently from promos and heros.
Content design
The development team created the transactional parts of each quiz type. I produced loose Miro wireframes which I then translated into more specific and detailed grid designs as the transactional elements were developed. These elements I re-visited and re-designed at crucial feedback points from our testers.
The content strategy evolved in tandem and we looked to create places where V&A value could be added to the site. This included adding result factoids on trivia quizzes and mixing V&A & non-V&A content at various navigation points: related content sections, landing pages, homepage promo sections.
ITERATION
The rest of the design process was about me understanding how to make the mechanics and transactions of each content type work smoothly, how to make the results rewarding, gauge what worked and didn’t work through more testing plus I could now finesse the entire branding proposition.
User interfaces & way finding devices
Each content type had a different set of colour ways. This included the standard UI furniture: image borders, checkboxes, buttons, results etc. I used this to create subtle division and wayfinding; a user would travel the site, most likely by topic and be subconsciously aware that they were travelling to a different place.
The added value of MISCHIEF!!!!
Included in my design strategy was the creation of a bit of subtle mischief as well as adding a few easter egg animations around the site. I felt it was a vital part of the branding of mused. We spent time as a team identifying what the added value might be. There were two types of mischief that I identified.
There were defined user end journeys on the site:
- A 404 error page with a rude cat scratch card.
- An interstitial page for visitors leaving the site with a waving pokemon character.
- A dead search result with a bubble gum blowing dragon. You can burst the bubble on its face. Try it. it’s fun
There were also mischievous elements for shits and giggles:
- A “Don’t press this button” button, that appeared randomly and would turn the page upside down when pressed
- V&A logos that can be tickled and they will wiggle
- The mused logo animating on page load like it’s a naughty giggler.
- Quiz results boxes subtley jumping with joy, nonchalantly shrugging or shaking sideways depending on how well you had done.
All of this added to the sense of fun that we wanted to create.
Accessibility & safeguarding
We took the accessibility very seriously throughout the whole project, starting as we meant to go along and making sure that our entire site worked for all: the nomenclature, the tone of the language was correct as well as the obvious standards like animation treatments, high contrast colour ratios and font sizes and legibility.
There were many site considerations around children’s online code, GDPR and COPR. We had a duty of care to our users and testers who were all under age and there were many safeguarding standards that we needed to reach including designing and building an the interstitial page to inform users that they were leaving the safety of the site, being clear and transparent with our messaging on data collection, getting the tone of the content right.
LAUNCH AND FINAL THOUGHTS
One year on, I came to a gathering to see how the site was performing and was happy to find a healthy uptake of visitor numbers and engagement.
This project was an extensive task and it was a very rewarding experience. I’ve only mentioned a fraction of the the work involved. I worked with a lovely and talented bunch of people and incorporated a lot of my skills and techniques into one large project. I very much enjoyed getting to know and speak to our user lab testers over the best part of a year. I am so very grateful to V&A for giving me the trust and respect to pull that work together.
CREDITS
Core team included Eva Liparova as Project Manager and James Nation as Product Owner, Kati Price, Head of Digital Media and Publishing at the V&A, Fiona Hodge, V&A Product Lead, Tom Windross, Head of content V&A as well as Tom Shreeve, Erica McKoy, Megan Graye on content delivery and Kim Plowright on interim Project Management. Big Bite were the 3rd party development team. Pitch designs by Jack Craig. Usability reviews by Caspian Turner of Accessible by Design. Trend spotters panel provided by Sonia at Oxy Insights. Special thanks to Hilary Knight for sub-editing this page.
