UX Case Study: Drawing on Information Architecture to Ease the Path into the Art World
Redesigning the Guggenheim Website’s Navigation System
Overview
While the works that line New York’s Guggenheim Museum deservedly take the spotlight in the memories that leave with visitors, the experience within the walls is defined by how the art is curated, presented, and organized. When we were asked for our project to analyze and redesign the navigation system for the Guggenheim’s website, we viewed our challenge in a similar light. We focused on the feelings that could be invoked in the movement through website, and how those could serve to satisfy the needs of both the user and the business.
Responsibilities
For the initial research and business analysis, I shared responsibilities with Caroline Dela Cruz. For the design, second iteration of testing, and final construction of the research report, I worked independently.
Problem Space
The Guggenheim faces the challenge of operating as an attraction while defending art’s position on the 21st century floor; when the prioritization of technology, sciences, and business, continue to push the walls in. While the museum is partially supported by its members (generating about $4 million in revenue in 2018), it relies much more on traditional admissions and donations ($19 million and $17 million respectively) to fund its education and conservation initiatives. This demonstrates a need for development of a new generation of supporters that will be willing to drive this revenue in the future.
Users
In thinking about the visitors to the website, we considered both the art aficionado and the inexperienced user. Veteran patrons rely on the website to stay current on exhibitions and take familiar actions like making a donation. Those less experienced with the art world can approach the museum with some hesitation, concerned about their limited knowledge of the jargon and subject matter. For them, the website can serve as an educational path to a more comfortable experience. If the website — especially its navigation — instead creates confusion for these users, it strengthens the perceived barrier to entry, and diminishes the opportunity to build a foundation of new museum supporters.
Scope and Constraints
We were given a limited time frame of September 18th to September 27th, 2019, with an emphasis put on the research phase of the project.
Process
Understanding that our recommendations would need to be in line with the objectives of the Guggenheim, we started with a business and competitive analysis. We also keyed in on the perspective of our primary persona, a young art student with a desire to discover upcoming exhibitions and pieces on display, so that she could introduce friends and family to the impact of seeing relevant art in person.
The overlap of the business and user needs shaped the next stage of our process, as we crafted tree testing and card sorting to mirror the most significant tasks within the navigation system. Combining these results with our own heuristic analysis of the website, we translated our findings into design, and applied another round of testing to validate our adjustments.
Research
Our analysis of the Guggenheim’s business model, as well as those of other key institutions that are jostling for the same space, highlighted some notable challenges and opportunities that could be better informed with testing. Direct competitors of the Guggenheim range in how they cater to their visitors, with some focusing more on education and others delivering entertainment or other forms of emotional impact.
Partially due to this range, there is a contrast in the features these companies choose to incorporate into their websites. While there are strong similarities across the board in the paths these websites deliver for basic actions such as buying tickets or membership, checking visitor information, or making a donation, many of the Guggenheim competitors focus more on creating an engaging digital experience for those less familiar with their subject matter. This includes features such as a glossary of terms, videos embedded in the primary pages, and offering branded GIFs and wallpaper.
With these findings, we were curious if user testing would demonstrate a similar disconnect between the Guggenheim and less experienced visitors to its website. We tested the overall organization and naming of content with a round of open and closed card sorting, aiming to understand if the website’s current information architecture matches the mental model of the average user. We found the closed card sorting particularly insightful, as even when we provided the existing categories in the website’s primary navigation, expectations of the participants matched that structure only 52% of the time. This indicates that users often expect desired information to be contained in a different location, leading to frustration and potential abandonment of the task.
We employed tree testing to dive even further into the organization of the website, stripping down the website to only its navigation options and labels, and giving participants tasks to complete to understand the ease and intuitiveness of the current structure. With our persona and business priorities in mind, we created four tasks that ranged from looking up the cost of admission for students, to finding a specific piece of art without being able to search the specific title or artist.
Using Optimal Workshop’s online tool, we were able to see the time and success rate of each task, as well as whether users were able to take a direct path to their result. The results demonstrated that there are significant challenges for users when the task requires a greater understanding of art terms other industry-specific constructs, versus finding a ticket price (which is able to leverage experience with similar tasks in other sectors of entertainment, like looking up movie tickets).
Design
With these insights in mind, we approached the design process with the primary objective of making the primary navigation more welcoming to the user with less art background. At the same time, our research showed that it was important to maintain the current navigation structure for the main revenue-driving tasks that already drew on familiarity with other websites. We also saw in our heuristics evaluation that it was important to keep certain aspects of the website’s elevated language intact to meet expectations of experienced patrons and preserve the credibility of the institution.
Focusing on these priorities, we moved the primary navigation from its current position on the left side of the page to the top. Currently the secondary navigation is hidden, and the user must click on primary option to be able to see the additional categories that the fairly vague labels house. By moving the navigation to the top, we were able to allow for drop down menus to appear when the user hovers over the primary options.
Drawing primarily on the data from the card sorting tests, we also changed the naming of all primary categories other than “Join & Give,” to a more descriptive labels with a conversational style. The aim was to create a stronger connection for inexperienced users between those labels and the more complex content that followed, to increase learnability and comfort with the museum experience. We further supported this objective by including headers that appear upon mouse-over of the primary navigation, categorizing three of the options as “The Museum,” and the other three as “The Art.” This was driven by the confusion testing demonstrated in users distinguishing between information about the museum itself, and the art held within the museum.
Outcome
When we brought the new design into another round of testing, we saw some interesting results. For the tree test, we actually saw a regression in the results. However, we attribute some of this to the fact that we tested a different group in the second round, which had a clear impact. We tested one task that required the same exact path under the proposed system as the existing, and the results were significantly less successful in the second round than the first. While still unclear, this points to a factor beyond the isolated change in navigation system. With more time, our next step would be to retest with a larger pool of participants to better understand this dynamic.
The results with our card sorting test were much more consistent and demonstrated strong improvement in the navigation system. We saw encouraging results with all participants, with participant organization of the content matching the redesigned system at a rate of 67%. This represented a 29% increase from the first round.
Ultimately, the research and testing of our proposed changes validated the need to make the navigation system of the Guggenheim more intuitive to users. Not only will this improve the overall user experience with the website, it offers an opportunity to bring a more inclusive image to those dipping their toes into the art world. This in turn can lead to a more reliable foundation of returning visitors, driving more traffic to the features of the website that already function properly and yield the most revenue.
