Wicked Problems: Culture and Heritage

Project Snapshot

This project was made in less than 2 weeks at the Ironhack UX/UI bootcamp. The challenge was to select a theme and do a full and through research of user pains and challenges, to later solve them with a well-established App. Within 1 week I was able to interview users, identified their main pain point, formulated a solution and implemented it into App.

Problem

During the challenge, I found that the biggest pain users had was to find valuable and meaningful experiences regarding our culture. Also a much bigger problem was the lack of reliable information and ticketing about cultural events.

Solution

When finding a solution to this problem, the main focus was to figure out what features where more desirable and how they where goin to be implemented in an app that is easy to navigate.

My Role

• UX design
• UI Cloning
• Interviewer
• Research

Timeline

• Overall: 1 week
• Discovery & Research: 0.5 weeks
• Design Cloning & testing: 0.5 weeks

User Interviews

I interviewed 3 people to know how was the their user’s experience regarding the culture and heritage mostly of art and museums. All the interviewees have similar pains listed below:

• There needs to have more variety or events.
• They like to go with a group or with someone.
• It is difficult to find reliable information and easy of access to reservations and ticketing services.

From the findings, it is evident that there is a need for cultural social events with reliable and easily accessible information with paid services.

Affinity Diagram

The data that is enclosed in green notes above, shows the user information that was recollected.

User Persona

To further empathize with our user base, I created a User Persona. This persona is a representation of the users interviewed and posses their characteristics and goals. Creating the persona, we are able to understand our user more to empathize further with them. This persona is a good way to promote a user-centered design process.

Emotional Journey Map

Next I created a Emotional Journey Map to visually show the Persona: “Alex Santiago ”s mood throughout the process of planning an outing. Using the emotional journey map we will know visually where Alex will be the most frustrated during the process.

We can easily see that the pain mood points in Jorge’s journey is mostly at the beginning, when he tries find and plan an outing. When looking into this issue, it looks like the problem stems from the lack of information readily available. The next pain points are in the near the end at the ticketing check out.

Problem Statement

Personas like Alex have a desire to explore our cultural heritage. In my research, I have observed that there is a lack of a reliable hub where events and information of events can be easily accessed which is causing users a lot of frustration and impeding cultural heritage growth.

How Might We Statement

How might we help users find a hub that interests them and that they can trusts?

Hypothesis Statement

I believe that by helping users like Alex find a hub that appeals to their interests and that they can trusts, an app that can retain users and attract new ones will be successful if there is reliable information and functional reservation/ticketing services.

Ideation Phase

I explored various ideas, through sketching and it consisted of these activities:

1. Worst Ideas

Here is where notes that where considered of “bad ideas” where writen to later select a few that could be changed into something useful.

2. Low-Fi’s

Afterward, low-fi’s where ideas turned into sketches until a better understanding of the possible UI that is going to be used.

3. Crazy 8’s

Here sketches and figma elements ideas where made.

Out of all the sketches, the predominant sketches resulted in including a chatbot with AI, a map of events with pins, and a list of events within one app. These ideas were refined and merged into a single concept for the prototype.

Mid-fi Wireframes

Taking into consideration the predominant ideas from the ideation phase and lo-fi sketches, a mid-fidelity wireframe was made. After completing each evaluated idea these where the wireframes that remained in the prototype:

Testing

With the app Useberry, the wireframes on Figma were linked into various 3 single tasks:

• Clicking all the icons at the footer from left to right
• Discover an Individual Artist’s event
• View an event and Arrive at the Pay Now

According to the prototype testing users, 6 out of 10 stated that the app was easy to navigate. The last task wasn’t very clear for two users, resulting in the potential of future improvements.

Hi-fi prototype in Figma

After the results of mid-fidelity prototypes, high-fidelity wireframes where made. These wireframes were carefully designed to incorporate feedback from users to reflect the changes made to the Information Architecture and visually appeal to the main idea as a centralized hub for events and artists.

Try out the prototype!

Hi-Fi Prototype for Arts & Culture App

Learning Curve

Finding solutions via designing the user experience is an adventure with many obstacles. However with the proper information a wireframe was crafted for the users: a platform showcasing events and artists, where users can discover and connect with their cultural heritage. While there are many ways to tackle a wicked problem, the approach was shaped by insights from users, and the use of introductive tools. Tackling these complex challenges has been a rewarding experience. With this foundation I’m confident that future projects will be more exciting and useful.