Improving Museum Visit and Navigational Experience for St. Louis Art Museum through Circulation and Behavior study
The Saint Louis Art Museum, located in St. Louis, Missouri, is a renowned cultural institution and a central fixture of the city’s vibrant cultural life.
It plays a crucial role in the arts and culture scene of St. Louis by housing a diverse collection of more than 34,000 works of art spanning five millennia and six continents; offering an expansive view of human creativity.
In this project, we aim to assess and understand how visitors currently experience the circulation flow at the St. Louis Art Museum, in order to make informed decisions on exploring the museum’s potential way of enhancing the overall visitor experience through user-centered guidance.
The Problem We Identify:
Visitors often face challenges in navigating the museum’s floor plans, leading to difficulty accessing the exhibits and display rooms. This research aims to address these issues and propose improvements to enhance the overall visitor experience.
How do we know this is a problem?
From multiple research visits to the St. Louis Art Museum, we’ve identified the apparent existence of problems like:
- Visitors might encounter congestion points in certain areas of the museum.
- Some exhibits or sections may receive disproportionate foot traffic, leading to uneven visitor distribution.
3. The current circulation flow might not efficiently guide visitors through the museum's exhibits. Leading them to easily miss multiple display rooms, hence affecting their overall experience.
4. Feedback and reviews from visitors may have indicated issues with the museum's layout and visitor flow.
5. For visitors who have a specific goal (eg. an exhibition they specifically want to visit), there is no existing guidance to assist them on successfully locating their desired visit goal.
So….
Our Goals!
- Identify the key pain points and challenges in the current circulation flow within the museum.
- Discover visitor preferences and expectations regarding the museum’s layout and navigation.
- Understand the impact of the current floor plans on visitor engagement and satisfaction.
- Explore best practices from other museums or cultural institutions to inform potential improvements.
Propose a set of actionable recommendations for enhancing the circulation flow experience at the Saint Louis Art Museum…
Research Statement (where we need to go)
We want to know how visitors currently experience the circulation flow at the Saint Louis Art Museum so that we can make informed decisions on improving the museum’s floor plans and enhancing the overall visitor experience.
Research Questions (what we need to know to get there)
Methodologies (how we will learn this)
First…
We started our research process by conducting Secondary Research Methods
Literature Review & Direct/Indirect Competitor Analysis:
We conducted a comprehensive review of existing literature and direct/indirect competitors on museum circulation flow. We can acquire research-related information in a time-efficient way. These information serves as a base ground and supplement for our further studies.
Then…
We conducted 3 Primary Research Methods:
- Participant Observation: We conducted observations over several days in Saint Louis Art Museum and Art Gallery of Ontario as a comparison. These on-site observations can identify visitor pain points and congestion areas.
2. Shadowing: We each shadowed one friend to Saint Louis Art Museum (Jennifer) and Art Gallery of Ontario (Mengxi) to observe and record their activities, behaviors, and reactions while navigating in the museum. By observing our participants in their natural state, we can identify individual preferences and challenges when navigating the museums. By conducting research in two different museums, we can compare and spot the potential improvement opportunities for SLAM.
3. User Interviews: We then conducted interviews with our shadowing participants after their visit. We then can understand their experiences, behavior, and choices of navigation better without enforcing too much disturbance during their visit.
We followed our Interview guide for an interview immediately after shadowing our participant, where their freshest memory and reaction of touring through the St. Louis Art Museum were recorded
These 3 Contextual Research methods helped us to…
1. Gain insights into visitor behavior and engagement patterns at different Museums.
2. Any confusions from the users that may occur through touring the space
3. Opportunities for museums to improve their navigation system
From that,
We recorded findings and notes gathered from research to generate Affinity maps, where we were able to organize these findings in a more concise way…
Therefore,
Important Affinity Map Takeaways and Possible Areas of Improvement were identified:
Now that we have collected and organized research findings and identified takeaways through the development of affinity maps. We began to identify our core target audiences through the creation of personas and journey maps.
We envisioned how Olivia (without a specific goal, just wants to fully tour all exhibit rooms) and Janet (with a specific goal, wants to see the “Aso Oke: Prestige Cloth from Nigeria” exhibition) might encounter scenarios during their tour through the St. Louis Art Museum.
And the different Actions, Thoughts, and Emotions they might have, where we can identify opportunities for improvements.
From the Personas and User journey of Olivia and Janet who represents our user segment. Needs statements were summarized:
These are all important user needs, we began to brainstorm what prototype(s) can best resolve issues with circulation in SLAM and features that should be prioritized during this process.
Prototype 1: A New Numbering System
From analyzing feature prioritization and prototype road map, we found that an organized numbering system is crucial for visitor’s circulation through the museum space to prevent them from backtracking or missing any exhibition rooms.
According to the direct comparison of St. Louis Art Museum Level 2’s original numbering system to the new numbering system. The importance of the new system is emphasized.
In the original one, it is almost impossible for visitors to navigate through the space without missing any rooms, because two rooms right next to each other might be labeled “138” and “126”, which confuses the visitors. This assumption is proved to be correct according to our previous observational research where both participant A and participant B missed 4 rooms on the lower right corner.
Furthermore, the unique layout of SLAM’s floor plan led to many extreme choices that the visitors had to choose constantly when they are navigating through rooms.
For example, imagine a visitor standing on the different red dotted points in the museum (see above image), they have to make dramatic decisions of navigating either left or right. When a decision has been made, for example, they ended up navigating to the left. There is a high chance they will either miss rooms on their right or have to backtrack a long distance to return to original position and navigate to the right.
The new numbering system, in this case, gently forms a planned route the visitors can follow, helping them effortlessly tour through all rooms (eg. follow signage to navigate from R1 to R20).
This numbering system can be implemented to all three floors in SLAM, the same logic and rules apply. With the right side of the room number goes from R1 to Rn, and the left side of the room number going from L1 to Ln.
Then you might ask…
How do the visitors communicate or locate a specific room on a specific floor if three R1 exists at the same time?
In this case, the color coded themes of each floor comes in handy. In Olivia’s case, she might recall that she just toured through the R1 on a floor that is yellow themed. She can then easily locate that room or describe it to others by saying “R1 on yellow floor”, which would be the second floor.
Prototype 2: Information Kiosk with Customized Map Function
In our research, we noticed participants struggling with backtracking while they are trying to locate the exhibits they wish to see. Despite world famous artworks such as “Mona Lisa” which would be noted on the map, most artworks nor the routes to it are not noted on the map. As a result, we proposed an information kiosk with customized map function to help visitors better navigate in the museum, optimize their routes, and find their desired exhibits without keeping asking the staff or backtracking.
Time to Test!
We then conducted Concept Testing for our prototypes Questions & Results
Test Walkthrough for Prototype 1: The new numbering system
From the test notes, the participant mainly expressed interest in the new numbering system and how he felt like it helped him clarify the space.
The interactive activity provided direct comparison of how user (the participant for test walkthrough this case) navigate through the space before and after moderation to the room numbering system.
Test Walkthrough for Prototype 2: The information kiosk with customized map function
From the test notes, the participant expressed that the idea was innovative, and how he can imagine visitors with specific goals can use this feature to locate an exhibition or a specific art piece they want. In addition, he suggested that the kiosk can have some preset maps for quicker customization.
Finally!
Important takeaways:
- With the chance, we would take this project further by conducting more primary research like surveys and interviews to have a better understanding of the circulation challenges from a more diverse group of people. We would also ask more people to provide feedback on our prototypes and then work on twisting and finalizing our prototype based on the feedback.
- Our project went well overall. We enjoyed our time physically visiting the different museums and our participants were engaging, leading to successful shadowing and interviewing experiences. However, at the same time, because our research involved physical visits, we had challenges coordinating our visit time. We also came up with alternative ways of prototyping (the map numbering system). In the future, we would communicate more frequently and promptly regarding our individual findings as a team to push the project further.
Thank you for your time.
__ Jennifer & MengXi