Oct 26, 2022
UX/UI case study of “AlphaArt”- Application to help Art Museum Visitors
In this article, I will discuss the UX Case study of a mobile application based on an imaginary Art Museum named “Alpha Art Museum”. This app aims to help the visitors of this Museum who want to explore more about the Artworks displayed there.
This project is a part of my Google certification, So I will be following the structure of Google’s course for outlining this UX case study.
Problem Statement
Visitors of “Alpha Art Museum” want to learn more about the Artworks displayed in the museum. When they try to find this information on google, they only get little detail about only a few Artworks, and they do not find the source of this information trustworthy.
Goal
To build a mobile app that helps visitors of the Museum to explore verified and trustworthy information about all the Artworks displayed in the Museum. This information will include History, interesting facts, and Artist's detail.
Project duration
8 weeks
Tools used
Figma
My Role
My responsibilities in this project include Foundation research, building wireframes, creating a low-fidelity prototype and conducting usability studies on it, and finally designing artistic-looking mockups
User Research: Summary
As I mentioned earlier, this app was to be built for an assumption-based art museum, so it was a challenging task to find the participants for user research who have the required characteristics. So I decided to find the participants from some online sources. Finally, I got five participants who used to visit some Art museums occasionally. I used a questionnaire as a tool to gather data from them about their attitudes, experiences, or opinions. The major goals of this research were:
- To know if Art museum visitors are really interested in learning more about the Artworks they see there.
- What kind of information do they want to explore about those Artworks
- How do they get the information about them for now, and what are their major frustrations regarding it?
- What are the additional frustrations that they face regarding Art Museums?
User Research: Pain points
- About most of the Artworks displayed in museums they visit, there is minimum to no information on the Internet. The few sources on the internet that provide information about them provide completely different details about the same Artworks, and they get confused about whom to trust
- The information they want the most about Artwork includes basic details of Artworks, their History in concise as well as in brief form, Interesting facts about them, and detail about their Artists.
- Sometimes on the weekends, they find a great rush inside Art museums, so it gets very difficult to locate the artworks they want to see. This was a completely new pain point for me, which I never considered or thought about before.
Based on this Research, I decided to divide the users into two user groups. Following are the two personas that represent these user groups.
Persona: Justin
Justin is a Student of Bachelor of Fine Arts who needs detailed information about Artworks displayed in “Alpha Art Museum” because this knowledge will help him to crack future job interviews.
Persona: Elina
Elina is a teacher at Modesto High School who need to learn interesting facts about Artworks displayed at Museum because her son asks about these facts whenever they visit the Museum.
STARTING THE DESIGN
Paper Wireframes
Paper and pencil are my best companion when it comes to starting a design process from scratch. Taking the effort to create paper versions of each app screen ensured that the elements that made it to digital wireframes would be well-suited to solve user pain points.
Digital Wireframes
There were two key user needs to address in this design; User-friendly navigation and information architecture. So, I ensured screen designs were based on feedback and insights from user research.
Low-fidelity Prototype
Using the completed set of digital wireframes, I created a low-fidelity prototype. So that it could be used for the Usability Study.
Usability Study
The purpose of conducting a usability study at this stage was to Figure out if the app is easy to use and do users like information architecture throughout the application. The findings from this study guided me to modify some of the wireframes before starting to work on the final mockups. The following are the findings of the usability study:
- Users wanted to reduce the navigation buttons on some of the screens, as they were making them confused to complete the task.
- Users wanted the artist list on the home screen as they find it a little difficult to spot which resulted in increased “time on task”.
- Users wanted a search option at the top of the artworks and artists list.
Based on these findings, I made modifications to the final mockups to make the design completely user-centered.
REFINING THE DESIGN
Final Mockups
The user experience of exploring the information is kept very quick, simple, and easy. With limited navigation and information categories being accessible within a single screen, it doesn’t allow the user to think about what to do next.
High-Fidelity Prototype
The final high-fidelity prototype presented cleaner user flows for exploring information. Follow the link to view it:
Accessibility Considerations
- The UI consists of a neutral, two-toned black-and-white color scheme with the exception of Red, which is the museum’s identity color. This highest contrast ratio throughout the application’s interface allows people who have some kind of color blindness, to engage with the application easily.
- I kept navigation throughout the application very user familiar, by keeping in mind the users who are not so familiar with the technology. To achieve this I used recognizable iconography, intuitive gestures, and linear user flows.
- In settings, I included the options of changing font size and modes (Bright, Dark, and High Contrast), this will help people with weak eyesight and who are sensitive to bright lights.
GOING FORWARD
Next steps
- Conduct another round of usability testing with the high-fidelity prototype to confirm that the users’ pain points have been effectively addressed.
- Conduct additional user research to identify any new areas of need.
What I learned?
While designing the “Alpha Art Museum” app, I learned that usability study and peer feedback are two building pillars of every app design and it is almost impossible to make a design user-centered without these.
Thank you for your time reviewing my work!
