Adventures in the Natural History Museum
Conceptual project with the aim of making a trip to the Museum more entertaining.
For the first group project, the Natural History Museum was looking for a way to make museum visits more engaging for visitors, through an app or responsive website. Following on from user research and testing, we developed the idea of an interactive map which will allow users to answer questions in order to progress through a game. Using ‘beacon’ technology incorporated into the game users, who be primarily children, would be entertained and engaged as they visited the museum. The incorporation into the existing app makes the game easy to use, and encourages downloads of the app to help users navigate around the museum.
Getting Started — Research & Planning
The team looked at 4 competing museums in London (British Museum, London Transport Museum, V&A and the Science Museum.
The websites were generally well designed, although navigating to some areas was complicated. The common features we found were: interactive map (and usually a downloadable PDF of the paper one), activities for families and individuals such as trails you can follow, and highlighting of accessibility mostly for people with physical disabilities.
The British museum had an app, however that was a game that didn’t involve any interaction with the museum environment. The London Transport Museum and V&A apps were simple postcard makers. We also looked at the existing Natural History Museum app, which we found had very few activities that encourage interaction in the museum environment, again relying on trails.
The next step was to create a project canvas for the project which helped is to think about elements such as the scope of the project, the assumptions, risks, constraints, as well as goals and the potential benefits to the user. We also provisionally identified 3 main user groups which we would like to interview: the Parent, the Traveller & the Casual Individual.
Contextual Inquiry/Site Visit
We also completed a site visit as a group, but split into pairs to investigate different aspects of the museum experience. One group looked at the customer journey to a specific exhibition, as well as general customer navigation.
With my partner, I looked at navigation from entrances, in particular, pain points and areas of congestion, to put into context how the users will be moving around the museum and if any of these issues would affect the design solution.
Finding Users through Screener Survey
In order to gather interview subjects for the projects, the team worked together to create a screener survey. We were interested in if the the person was visited museums and how often they attended, which museums they preferred to attend and their motivation for attending (i.e. culture, social, a family outing). We also tried to establish some behaviours to find ideal candidate for the interviews by asking if they visited museums while travelling and also if they liked to plan their visit ahead of time.
Of the 52 responses we had, a quarter didn’t visit museums at all in the past 6 months, and so were discounted, and we contacted the some of the remaining responders to arrange interviews.
Interviewing Users & Affinity Mapping
We completed 13 user interviews, from a variety of age ranges. We wanted to cover all the user groups we had identified as being key to the project, and from those interviews found valuable insight. All the users enjoyed the atmosphere of a museum — the sounds and smells, the feeling of gravitas that came with museum buildings which spoke to the expert knowledge that a museum brings with it as an institution.
Amongst the ‘Parent’ user group, it was about how easy it is to get to the museum, and in particular once there, facilities such as toilets. Parents were also concerned with keeping children interested once there, especially if there were more than one child. The ‘Traveller’ wanted the experience to be authentic and informative, as they would often visit museums relating to the history of a city or country. They relied on the information they were given about an exhibit and were frustrated when the information was difficult to read, or exhibit information wasn’t in their native language. The ‘Casual Individual’ was the most time rich, and would often use a museum visit as part of a social outing, or a means of killing time beforehand. This user group was more concerned with crowds and being able to take their time to enjoy an exhibit.
From these user interviews, we were able to glean some key themes which resonated through all the user groups. These were Being Social, a spirit of independent exploration, trusting expert knowledge, fear of missing out, I have achieved something, exploration and discovery, I don’t want to feel rushed, a multi-sensory experience and a desire to understand.
Creating & Understanding Personas
We revisited the user journey, based on our site visit and a better understanding of the user to identify pain points we would like to address. The primary areas that caused the most difficulty were navigating to the museum (which was out of the scope of the project) and navigating to specific exhibits.
Using our interview research, we crafted 3 proto-personas. Martha, The Parent, wanted a way to keep her children (of various ages) entertained at the same time and was concerned with making the best use of her time with them. She was frustrated by moving around on public transport with her children, and also identifying child-friendly activities when planning a visit.
Jorge, The Traveller, loved exploring the places he travelled to for work, and wanted to spend more time with his sisters family when visiting London. He found it frustrating when information was inconsistent, or when he had trouble navigating, as was generally short on time when visiting places.
The final proto-persona was Zoey, the Casual Visitor. She would often only visit a museum for a specific exhibition, and enjoys when the exhibits show her something new. He main frustration was that often opening hours of museums will match her working hours sho she isn’t able to go during the week, and as a result often visits at the busiest times.
We ultimately choose Jorge as the primary persona as we felt his frustrations were shared in some measure by the other personas; he was also probably the most common visitor to the museum. Martha was our secondary persona.
Starting to Develop — Design Studio & Wireframing
With the personas in mind, we created scenarios to take into our design studio. We looked at 2 for Jorge: the first, that he is visiting London and would like to take his sisters children to the Natural History Museum, and the second that he has been to the Natural History Museum before and would like to see or experience something new. For the third design challenge we focused on Martha: that it was a rainy day and she would like to take her children to the museum, but wants a way to keep all the children engaged as they are different ages.
We ran 3 design studios, with many great ideas developed, including 360 degree pictures, incentivisation though a free coffee or prize draw and a route planner for museum visits. However, we settled on the idea of engaging visitors, especially children, through gamification of the visit. The initial design solution was an app which requires the user to collect information by going around an exhibit and scanning or entering a code to win points or stamps, which would give them an fact interesting fact about that particular exhibit and would in turn then receive a stamp.
With this idea in place we decided on the user flow for the app and sketched our wireframes, which in turn developed into the paper prototype.
Working with Existing Branding
It was important that the user would easily identify the app as being assosciated with the Natural History Museum. As such I decided to use the existing colours the Museum uses, and find typefaces as close as possible to the existing branding. We wanted the sense of adventure and explaoration that is synonymous with the Museum so we explored ideas such as old maps and passports, before settling on parchment as a background to the game.
Prototyping & Testing
Initial testing was generally positive, with users enjoying the idea of being able to collect something as they went around the museum. However, users commented that while they liked receiving the fact and the stamp, but weren’t encouraged to progress any further.
“Didn’t know what I was going to get. Felt more like trivia questions than clues.” — Alexandra
“I liked [the stamps] because kids can keep track of what they’ve done and you don’t have to second guess the second time you are there whether or not you remember what the kids have done before.” — Hani
Users were also wary of the onboarding process which required them to take a picture of the person who would be ‘exploring’ as it would usually be children.
“If I downloaded the app I’m not certain If I’d want to share all the information about the kids. “ — Frankie
We had mixed views on it being an app versus a responsive website, but on the whole, felt that the native app would work better as it made use of the camera and it would integrate well into the existing Natural History Museum app.
Several users also suggested a geolocation version, rather than having to scan codes as often if displays are popular then it is difficult to get close.
Creating Digital Wireframes & Moving into Low Fidelity
Once we had iterated on the feedback, we moved into low fidelity digital prototyping. Testing with users again revealed further pain points, mainly around recieving feedback from the interface.
“I would use the map to see my location, and look for my directions. It doesn’t show where I am or the entrance point.” — Tim
“I would like to see the checkpoints change colour once you’ve completed them” — Louisa
The geolocation ‘push’ of questions tested really well as it allowed the user to return to points that might be a bit busy, or return if the user needed to leave the exhibit for any reason.
“ I think there should be more of a story through the exploration experience.” — Carrie
Users were also were struggling to connect with the purpose of the app, with one even asking why she would want to continue with collecting them or taking part in other exhibits.
“The incentive to collect stamps is not there. Why should I be using this app?” — Cellyn
Meet George — Connecting the Users with the Task
As part of the feedback, we decided to create a story to go along with the game. This would encourage users to go along by introducing the concept, but also give a degree of investment on their part as it would humanise the game.
The idea is that George has lost the stamps the collected in museum and that he needs help to collect them again. Users really responded to the George character and the story that went along with it. It also helped with onboarding, as they are reading a story rather than instructions.
At my suggestion we also helped this process by putting the George character in to the paper map that is already handed out, along side the existing promotion of the app.
Once the app is downloaded and the user starts playing along they will get George’s story and a small explanaition.
The feedback about the homepage was probably the most difficult to respond to because it was very subjective, and a lot of the problems came down to copy, rather than UI elements.
“There are too many words on the homepage, it’s a lot to read” — Sian
“I don’t know what this passport thing is — because I’m a clever guy I get it but it’s not intuitive straight away” Alex
Moving Forward — Next Steps
The first thing I would have liked to have done with this project would be to test with children in the museum environment.
Once I was happy that the implementation of the app worked, I would like to:
- Improve museum map interaction (perhaps highlighting accessible areas, facilities and resting spots as these were concerns that the users voiced in interviews.)
- Tie in with website to enable the creating of profiles and save / plan future visits.
- Separate gamification for adults and children of differing ages to make sure there was a challenge in the game.
