Journey to the American Writers Museum
Selecting the museum
Finding and selecting the museum was a serendipitous happenstance. I wanted to find a museum that is close to the GA (General Assembly) campus. And by chance AWM (American Writers Museum) was only a 10 minute walk from campus. Even by name: AWM, the museum intrigued me because of my interest in the subject matter. It is small and intimate. The interactive exhibits connects the visitor to the American writing experience.
Experience at American Writers Museum…
Everything about the museum engages the visitor through visual, hands-on participatory activity or both. At the entrance, the grand visual imagery of the country to welcome visitors, it is a homage to the nation of great writers…
Exhibit that engages the visitor to walk and participate through the timeline of great American writers…
A tribute to the “typewriters”, power of the “typed” word…
While I visited, I also interviewed museum visitors and collected data:
Repeated themes:
- “Did not know about the museum web-page and online store”,
- “Highly interactive”, “Overwhelmed with excitement” & “Very cool”
- (Museum member) “Good website. Don’t remember checking out the online store.”
In perspective…The museum served its purposed and delivered the mission & heritage by encouraging and engaging visitors to participate with the interactive exhibits.
- Educate the public about American writers — past and present
- Engage visitors to the Museum in exploring the many exciting worlds created by the spoken and written word
- Enrich and deepen appreciation for good writing in all its forms
- Motivate visitors to discover, or rediscover, a love of reading and writing
- Inspire the young writers of tomorrow
And to this end, I decided to pursue additional interviews from a different perspective. This time based on online visits without the museum experience.
The request was to visit the AWM (American Writer Museum) online page…
And provide an assessment based on the below…
- Look and Feel
- Experience
The collected responses are:
- Nice UI: “Very cool. Dynamically designed. Adjustable and responsive pages.”
- Page appears to be more ”educational” then about writers.
- “Other than the photo showing people with typewriters…can’t tell this is a page about writers”
In conclusion… the online Museum Challenges
- Interactive “Brick and Mortar” experience does not translate directly to museum web-site
- Museum website is designed with UI in mind: Pleasing layouts & Visually attractive
- Museum branding is there (AWM logo) but visitor are not aware or know the availability of the online shopping option to support the museum
As such, the Design Principal for the Museum Online Store:
1) Enable AWM (American Writers Museum) to inform the public / visitor to the existence of the web-stie, leading to Online-shopping experience (2)
2. Connect the museum’s (on site) user experience to its online presence (below) and encourage visitors to support the museum through its online shopping portal:
1) Permanent and 2) Special exhibits
3) Special events / Guest speaker
4) Mission & Heritage
2.1 Add interactive shopping experience (clickable search) to the museum shopping portal.
To start, above DP #1 (Design Principal) was out-of-scope. It extends outside of the confines of eCommerse redesign.
Instead, I will focus on DP #2 and bring attention to museum’s 3 exhibit areas (Museum Exhibits, Special Exhibits and Guest Speakers) and its mission statement (Mission & Heritage). Within each page, add links to the shopping portal to help support the museum.
Sample wire-frame creations…
Connecting the wire-frame to the User Flow.
* Take the user from the home, (AWM) American Writers Museum, page
* Navigating to the various exhibited areas
* Leading the user to the shopping portal
From DP 2.1 : Add interactive shopping experience (clickable search) to the museum shopping portal.
The solution from the above DP 2.1 came about as I organized the shopping portal
In detail, below are examples of:
* Hzome page: Highlighting museum’s main departments
* Exhibit page with links to the shopping portal
The current state of the museum shopping portal allows only manual “search” for products…
Once in the Shopping portal, my design will enable “clickable search” allowing the user to find and select products simply just by clicking on project categories and selecting on the desire product.
From DP 2.1 : Add interactive shopping experience (clickable search) to the museum shopping portal:
* The clickable search will at least offer a small semblance of the museum interactive nature. On several user tests, I’ve noticed that the feature was intuitive and there was no need to provide instruction.
I did however needed to explain that “manual” search feature is still there.
User Testing, Iteration and Feedbacks…
The current look and feel of the AWM eCommerce website have done through many changes from user suggestions and recommendations.
* Organized shopping portal into categories
* Limit search to filter online shopping items (and not the entire museum)
* Label search button
* Labeling all Menu options
* Provide ample space between top search Menu options for readability
In conclusion…
At the end of the presentation, the questions that I received from Jason (guest instructor) coincides with my initial observations.
* Jason Q: Where is this museum? (Never heard of it.)
A: Opened up a year ago in May’2017
* Jason Q: Newness of museum - Any promotional ads?
A: Online presence is limited. Existence of the museum is through word-of-month, newspaper, 3rd party links (Travelocity)
Continuing from above, the initial interviews and data that I collected leads me to my 1st Design Proposal:
* Enable AWM (American Writers Museum) to inform the public / visitor to the existence of the web-stie, leading to Online-shopping experience.
I formulated a list of solutions. In reviewing with Shilpa (UX instructor), it was brought to my attentions the solutions were marketing based and was leading me toward away from focusing on the eCommerce redesign.
Moving forward, a possible digital solution is perhaps to implement browser search management. Suggestions and recommendations to America Writers Museum based on user search based on targeted website.
Final Thought
UX design is indeed like a journey. It is allowing the UX process to lead you toward the design, solution and implementation. I started on this project not knowing what to look for or what to implement. But once I started focusing on the data and analyzing the results, the Design Principal came to light and from there I was able to formulate my solution. However, coming up with the solution is the not the end, it is simply just the beginning another journey toward UX Design process. So, journey continues…
Journey into the clickable prototype: https://projects.invisionapp.com/d/main#/console/14413534/299728662/preview