The Guggenheim Museum
A research informed update to the existing website information architecture of the landmark contemporary art museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. There are multiple levels to the value offering of the Guggenheim. The museum provides visitors with access to a diverse art collection, artists displayed receive recognition for their work, and attendees are entertained by exhibitions and events.
Additionally, the museum houses art research, preservation, and education departments.The building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was designated a national historic landmark in 2008, and is one of 8 of Wright’s buildings on the UNESCO World Heritage. Memberships, tickets, and gift shop items purchased by visitors to the museum are one financial contribution the museum receives. Additionally corporations, trusts, collectors, and the foundation are key financial contributors.
The museum has three locations and is accessible online. For our purposes we will only focus on the deployment of art at the physical New York location. Honing in on this further, we hope to understand how museum attendees locate information on the Guggenheim website about key activities they may want to enjoy at the museum.
A visit to the Guggenheim most likely doesn’t start when you walk in door, but here on the Guggenheim website.
In order to understand what users are expecting from their interaction with this site, preliminary business research was performed.
Understanding the Landscape
The Guggenheim, is a well known , prestigious contemporary art museum, it is situated with the likes of the Met, MoMa and the Whitney on must visit New York Art Institutions. Additional competitors include the New MuseumBrooklyn Museum, as well as more niche contemporary galleries such as David Zwirner and Pace . Comparators were identified as other experiential activities available in New York City. These were the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Metropolitan Opera, Class Pass, VR World, and Urban Glass.Compilation of these matrices was further explored via a feature analysis.
Feature Analysis
This Matrix identifies potential areas for improvement based on side by side analysis of existing site features of The Guggenheims key competitors: this helped us have more clarity in how the museum is positioned to provide a similar or even more exceptional experience and therefore we can positively impact the user journey
From careful research of existing features, we identified best practices in this space.
Abby’s Heuristics
From here we took a deeper dive into the Site. we measured the site pages home, plan your visit, exhibitions, collections online, and membership against known and accepted conventions from Abbys Heuristics for Information Architecture
From this analysis categories of findable, accessible, and learnable were identified as significant areas for improvement
Findable in this case, meaning the ability to locate the information your seeking, accessible meaning anyone can understand how to interpret and use the site and learnable meaning =the site is intuitive and has its own voice
So, who is going to the museum and who are we designing for?
Persona
Meet Florence
Florence represents a typical New Yorker who would visit the museum.
She is an art student who enjoys including her family and friends on her visits. Like any studious new york resident she is limited on time. She finds out about new exhibits via word of mouth
Her goals are to explore new cultures and ideas through art and align her busy schedule with current exhibitions.
She needs variety in the art and cultural events she attends, but also enjoys viewing the works of artists she already knows
How might we help Florence save time, catch the latest exhibits and get more out of her visit to the museum?
Research to Insights
The current site navigation is an overlay menu with ambiguous hierarchy that is easy to get lost in
Time is the biggest limited resource for Florence , so an organized, clear navigation is crucial.
If Florence hears about an exhibit and become overwhelmed by the site when planning, buying tickets , or seeking more information she might decide not to go.
To Dig in a little bit more on how this plays out on a larger scale, the current site features many repeated elements and ambiguous headers , Important information like exhibits and the collection can only be located through the tertiary navigation which causes confusion and frustration.
To see how Florence might be impacted by the areas identified as opportunities for improvement , we created three tasks that she would likely need the website for.
Task one was to find a current exhibition at the museum
Task two asks the user to locate a particular artists work
Task three asks that the user sign up for a membership
Tree Testing
A tree test using these tasks and the current navigation was conducted To understand more how users respond to the current navigation. This process helped us determine how intuitively users could navigate the organization of information on the site to find what they need. We listed each item from the navigation menu (“Visit”, “Exhibitions”, “Join & Give” etc.) into a simplified representation of the site’s content hierarchy and then digitally shared it with participants. They were asked to complete three tasks so we could observe how they navigated through the site to try and accomplish each.
Users experienced 92% success rate for task one (current exhibitions) 37% failure rate for Task 2 (locate an artist) and 53% failure rate for task 3 (membership)
This high failure rate on tasks 2 and 3 indicates that users would benefit from a clearer taxonomy and less complex paths. start our analysis of the Guggenheim Museum site’s existing information architecture (IA). More detailed results follow.
As exemplified by Task 1, users were able to locate information about current exhibits with almost complete direct success. All users went through the “Visit” or “Art” primary navigation option and ended on either the “Calendar” or “Exhibitions” page, both of which provide information about current exhibitions. The average time of 13.2 seconds to complete this task indicates that though there are multiple routes a user can take to access information about exhibits, the amount of options may be somewhat confusing.
For Task 2, we studied how intuitively users could locate information about specific artists exhibiting at the museum. Users had significantly more trouble with this task though 63% of users ultimately managed to complete the task through a direct or indirect path. 38% of users failed to locate the “Collections Online” page which allows you to browse all artists in the Guggenheim’s permanent collection. Upon closer examination, 32% of users incorrectly selected “On View” as their solution and 78% of users explored the “Visit” and “Exhibitions” paths before heading back and trying a different path. The average time to complete this task was the worst of the three at 24.5 seconds. Moving forward we will further evaluate whether the taxonomy and content hierarchy can be made more effective.
Task 3 helped us understand a user’s thought process when it came to signing up for a membership. This task had a completion time only slightly higher than our most successful task (Task 1) at 13.5 seconds, but it also had the highest failure rate at 54%. 21% of users selected “Engage” before going back and choosing another path and 50% of users incorrectly selected “Families and Kids”. 33% correctly selected “Members” and only 13% users were able to find the membership sign up located on the “For Families” page. This indicates that users could benefit from a clearer taxonomy and less complex path to sign up for membership.
Tree Testing Takeaways
Current exhibit information is very intuitive to find, potentially due to its location through two different primary navigation options (“Visit” and “Art”).
The taxonomy and content hierarchy that determine how the “Collections Online” page is organized should be redesigned to allow users to find information about artists with less confusion.
The high failure rate and range of answers indicates that users can benefit from a clearer taxonomy and less complex path to sign up for membership.
Card Sorts
So what do users need?
Closed and Open card sort testing with our users indicated that they preferred fewer navigation headers. More on this research is below.
One round of open card sorting to assess the current information architecture of the Guggenheim Museum website. Through an online user research platform called Optimal Workshop, our team asked 10 anonymous participants to sort 25 cards that represent each page on the site. Users were asked to group the cards into categories that made the most sense to them and to name these categories.
Through this activity, we were able to identify which categories, and category labels made the least sense to our users: While most users categorized and named the “Visit” and “About” categories similar to the current Guggenheim Museum website, the other categories — named “Art”, “Engage”, “Join & Give”, and “Research” — showed almost no consistency or commonalities in our users’ open card sort results.
Open Card Sort Results : Participant 1–5
Open Card Sort Results : Participant 6–10
Open Card Sorting Key Insights
Through our open card sort, we discovered all the possible groups that make the most sense for our users on the Guggenheim Museum website. On Average, our participants of this card sort study made 4.3 categories to group our 25 pages that we provided for them. Considering that the current website includes 6 different categories, there are probably too many categories for the users to choose from in our current website.
Category Labels Created By our Open Card Sort Participants
We found a wide range of labels created by our open sort participants. After taking out the “outlier” labels that don’t have any similar or repeating labels, we were able to identify five main categories that had several similar or repeating category labels created. As shown in the table below, the “About”, “Visit Us”, “Collections”, “Resources & Additional info”, “Contribute” were the most prominent groupings in our open card sort study. The naming and labels vary slightly, and our next steps will include how to consolidate the namings from our data to most accurately represent the content of each category grouping on the redesigned information architecture of the Guggenheim Museum website.
Closed Card Sorting
Open and closed card sorting are methods that complement each other. After open card sorting, we also conducted one round of closed card sorting to assess the current information architecture of the Guggenheim Museum. We asked five participants to sort 25 cards that represented each page on the site into 6 existing categories. Users were asked to group cards into the category that made the most sense to them. By doing so, we verified that some pages on the existing site have been placed underneath a category that is not intuitive to most users.
Closed Card Sorting Key Insights
On Guggenheim Museum’s current website, there are 6 categories listed as the primary level of hierarchy. In other words, the whole website was divided into 6 main sections and these sections are displayed on their navigation bar. There were a few pages that all 5 users found intuitive to sort underneath a specific category. Sometimes, these arrangements were also in unison with what the Guggenheim is currently displaying on their website. For example, all users concluded that the pages “Calendar”, “Group Info”, and “Plan your Visit” should be found under “Visit”. As shown in the museum’s current navigation bar, these pages are indeed arranged under “Visit”.
However, for most cards, there was a division between the users as to where each page should be categorized under. As seen on the chart displayed below, most users found Guggenheim’s current page groupings to be illogical. Users were most at odds with the categorizing of “Art” and “Engage”. More specifically, all 5 users thought the page “Initiatives” should not have been encapsulated in “Art”. Instead, most users thought “Engage” would be a better grouping for that page. Under “Engage”, users thought this category should have included “Collections Online”, “Education”, and “News”. However, only a few users thought the current pages that sit under “Engage” are categorized intuitively. Alternatively, the current pages (“Audio” and “Video”) are placed under “Art” more commonly in the card sorting. Overall, only 57% of the current information architecture proved to be intuitive to users.
(re)Designing for Florence
Moving on from the research team, I entered my role as designer for Florence I sought to improve the existing site, in order to make it more findable, accessible, and learnable so Florence can have a great time with her friends and family at the museum
Currently, the site navigation Reads in multiple directions there both from the left side navigation as well as a top drop down which collapses on hover to and shows secondary navigation. This ends up creating a jumble of headers that is easy to get lost in
Red is a color that is a known indication of a warning but is used throughout the site to indicate call to action buttons and titles. This can confuse many users.
Specialized search within exhibitions/art/collection online is not currently available. This would help Florence get more information faster so she can plan her visit.
The turquoise color used throughout the site is inconsistent and distracts from the site having a known and learnable style, combined with the red, it creates a jarring combination of stop and go messaging that hinders clear navigation messaging.
New Design and User Insights
Here is the proposed site new navigation : which takes these improvements into consideration.
So how did I get here? And how does the proposed navigation compare to the current?
The Design Process
Items buried into tertiary navigation and made them more prominent. Additionally, the primary nav has less categories overall. Calendar, Membership, Search and ticketing were also positioned more prominently.
I created a style guide In order to create a more learnable site that is aligned with other contemporary art museums.
Here is a walk through of Florence locating one of her favorite artists, Yto Barrada whose work she would like to see in person on her next visit
Here is a prototype of the site if you would like to follow along: https://www.figma.com/proto/ejQcupAsTHatUa4oSMvzoH/Guggenheim-Proposed-Redesign?node-id=4%3A157&scaling=min-zoom
Quantifying the Changes
Key Takeaways
- All users were able to complete the tasks with 100% success via direct or indirect methods
- The directness of Task one reduced from 87% to 50% . The directness of Task 2 increased from 58% to 67%
- The directness of Task 3 increased from 75% to 100%. Additionally the fail rate decreased to zero from 46%
Below is the research information which shows the user testing differences between the existing site and the proposed navigational changes
Tree Pie for three tasks with existing site navigation
Tree pie for three tasks with new navigation
