UX Case Study — Designing a Museum Digital Experience
Introduction
Project created by: Majid, Bayan, Hajer, Khalid,, and Ahmed
Tools : Figma, Figjam, Slack, Zoom
Welcome to for my third Medium Case Study for a project I and my Team have been working on for about 3 weeks!
This Case study is about a creating a Digital experience Platform For Al Tayebat Museum in Jeddah, Our Job was to Find issues for an existing Experience and enhance it in term of overall experience, information architecture, interface design to produce a digitalized experience that serves the purpose of the business.
To Design a Mobile/Desktop experience, Enhance the User Journey, Prioritize features, and deliver it!
While of course maintaining the Brand style and the feel #0_0#
We will Journey into this case study as a design process, which is the Double Diamond Method.
Hope you’re ready!
Museum Brief
In Order to Understand the product we must first Understand the business
Tourists often call it this museum a hidden gem, because of how little people speak or even talk about it. Even though this museum has been around for more than 20 years!!!
So we begin by asking ourselves, Why Don’t Locals visit this Historic Landmark?
But, Why aren’t people encouraged to visit Al Tayebat Museum?
First we need to address Our competitors
Let’s take a look at the Competitors Research Findings
Let us begin with the Physical Experience Findings
And with that let’s move on to Digital Experience Findings
But what is so different between Our Museum and Other Museums?
For example noticed the Louvre Abu Dhabi and future museum in Dubai are our biggest competitor in terms of features and digital experience, That translation doesn’t go all the way when it comes to our pre existing museum but other bigger competitors do.
With that we painted a clearer picture of where we are heading.
and now we shall dive into our user interviews
So let’s begin by defining our User Research Process
Research Plan
First we are going to ask 5 Questions
User Screener
We began Our Recruitment by running a Screening survey
But why did we choose a screener?
Simply because we want to filter out the highest potential Users to further Interview and collect the richest data.
User Interviews
After conducting screeners we have identified many qualified Users to Interview
We interviewed 10 people,
The interviews were conducted remotely & face-to-face,
We asked a total of 12 questions,
We asked a variety of questions and few were about Al Tayebat museum,
Many people gave us extra information that helped us along the way.
So what are the Interview Findings?
After we learned so much from the User Interview it was time for us to also learn from the business
so we made two visits.
Let’s take a look at the Contextual inquiry for both visits
After collecting rich data it was time to do an affinity mapping for the extract those juicy findings, I wont bore you with the Humongous Map So let’s jump straight to the findings!
After all the solution is the most exciting part :)
We found that visitors hear about Museums using Social media, Searching online or through friends.
Visitors Also Need a clear display of the Museums general information, opening hours, tickets Prices, Etc (et cetera)
Visitors dislike unorganized and crowded Museums
Their motivation in visiting museums is educational, as they aim to learn more about History and Culture, And they also value museums that offer different digital experiences like audio recordings, digital tours.
They also expects them to have indoor seating and shops
So, What is the problem?
It became clear that the business and users are experiencing problems on each side, although these problems do share some in common
That Be, Locals don’t know about the museum, Which effects their business and there is not enough information about it online, Also, The museum can be very confusing for first time visitors as the amount of exhibit and artifacts can overwhelm them
And what is the solution?
Well, Creating a website containing enough information about the museum and it’s exhibit while being fast and accessible with easy navigation features, so they won’t get lost inside the museum
With that covered Let me Introduce a very special guest!
Hopefully you got along with Sara!
Because we are going to explore her User Journey now!
Let’s cover Sara’s most important touch points!
and what are the opportunities we can utilize to improve her experience?
Sara gets frustrated when the information she needs is hard to find.
And A digital directory that consolidates all the Museum information would definitely provide Her with what she needs.
We also noticed post Sara visit, that she had a lingering feeling of missing some aspect of the museum, So by providing souvenirs and online communities would definitely be a positive addition!
MOBILE WEBSITE!!!
Hold on back up here a minute!
I’m not letting you go that easy, First let’s explore few of the reasons why we DID pick a mobile website.
At the beginning with listed few reasons why that would be the case.
- No need to download
- Targets new users who search for events and museums online
- Cheaper to implement
- Responsive design
- User can use it anytime if needed
But our reasons also changed as we worked on the design, Our journey slowly started making sense to us, So what are the real reasons a Mobile Website is a good choice?
To be honest we forgot the fact Sara Used her phone in her journey all the way and did not take it into account, I mean in a sense where we did not clearly explain that when we thought of the reasons, We simply generalized some simple reasons
So the main reasons a Mobile Website is a good option are!
- Visitors mostly consist of new comers or tourists thus they utilize their mobile device as a main source of information and navigation.
- Websites are far easier to find for users than App’s.
- Websites are accessible from almost any device anywhere anytime, thus it’s flexibility.
We came up with many idea’s and features that we prioritized in our Moscow from MUST Have, Should Have, Could and Wont.
Iteration
We went thru many sitemap structures before finalizing it, and we choose The labels based on the museums exhibits and added some of our features like shop, digital tickets, and digital map
Let’s visualize The site map according to sara’s needs :)
And iterate further!
Our Style
We based the Typography with the current museum website as we want to maintain the brand, we included the museum logo as well, Of course in term of pallet we based it on the theme of the museum during the Visits
We will conclude the design phase with sketches and Lo-fi wireframes
Hope you’re excited ;)!
As we know so far, Sara Values interactive experience, as she continue to seek to deepen her knowledge in diverse cultures and history, and that we shall provide!
The museum has many floors and buildings that contain different exhibits and artifacts that Sara needs to visit, and so we provided her with an interactive experience to assist in her journey.
Oh yeah! first and foremost Sara will need to get her tickets
So why not get them online while she’s still interested?
Of course no Final design is truly complete without testing it with real users
Usability testing
We began the testing the design by reaching out to users who fits Our persona, we provided them with 3 tasks written as scenarios while, as the test ran, we monitored our users behavior and navigation to understand their behavior and feelings.
TASKS
Task 1 : You are Interested In an activity at the Museum, You want to Buy a Ticket to visit the Museum for the activity.
Task 2 : You Are in the Museum and need Help Navigating, Use the website to find “Asir Divan” Room within the Saudi heritage Exhibit.
Task 3 : You are looking for “Saudi Heritage” but you don’t know what floor it is, Use the Map to know which floor it is.
Amount of Participants : 12
Iteration
as a result of the usability test we have pinned down design improvements that we need to go over to further improve the experience for Sara and her new friends!
Let’s check out some design improvements
We also noticed that the navigation button was not clear that users missed often missed it.
It’s time to go on a journey with Sara!
Finally, Behold! the Future solution
I hope you didn’t expect this was the end right?
we planned further ahead for the future
let the wings of idea’s and creativity soar and may this project bring light to you
This has to be the most exciting journey I had to experience myself
How about you?
Thank you for sticking around This far!
I wanna give my thanks to MISK foundation for giving me this opportunities to work on such an exciting project.
