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GalleryPal

SUMMARY:

ROLE: Lead Designer

TOOLS: Adobe Xd, Invision, Bitesize UX

TIMELINE: 5 days

This project was done as part of a modified Google Ventures design sprint, taking place over five days. I began with a very broad prompt to “improve the experience of viewing art in a museum”. As a former art major and current museum enthusiast I felt I could bring an informed insight to the problem space. The challenge was set to design a mobile app that would improve the in-person experience of viewing art. 

My solution is GalleryPal, an app that can provide quick, highlighted information about the artworks, and lets visitors create their own tours.

My role was to tackle a different facet of the design each day as part of the sprint. While this process would normally be done with a team, in this case I ran a modified, one-person version. 

DAY  1: MAP

On Monday, I reviewed the user research provided, and mapped out the problem and an area of focus. 

My primary persona (provided) was a 23-year old Junior Art Director named Angela. Angela wants to get more out of her museum visits but when she tries to do research beforehand she loses interest due to how long and in-depth the information is. 

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DAY  2: SKETCH

On Tuesday, Day 2,  I started by reviewing existing solutions through Lightning Demos, choosing a mix of comparative museum and art history apps.

After reviewing the existing solutions and highlighting the elements that worked best, I moved on to sketching solutions. First, I did a Crazy 8’s exercise, sketching 8 solutions in 8 minutes.

Of these solutions I chose my first idea, a screen with expandable highlights about the work overlaid on its image. After this exercise I moved on to the solution sketch (a three-panel board of the screen that comes before the critical screen, the critical screen itself, and the screen that comes after).

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DAY  3: DECIDE

On Day 3, Wednesday, I expanded my solution sketch into an 8-panel storyboard.

 

I used this storyboard to map the user flow of selecting artworks to make a custom tour, and then included screens for mapping, artwork information, rating the tour, and finally a home screen.

 

My designs were hoping to make personalization a focus while presenting highlights of the works in a quick and easily digestible format.

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DAY  4: PROTOTYPE

On Day 4, Thursday, I got to work building the prototype. Inspired by the classical style of an art museum, I chose a dark color palette that would display well in an indoor gallery and allow the artwork images to stand out.

 

Informed by the user feedback about the long, dense nature of the information, I prioritized the legibility of text using a combination of the Serif and Sans Serif versions of Adobe’s Source Pro typeface.

 

I included a quick addition of a ‘stories’ element to present works from the collection with brief highlights and background in an effort to get them interested in works they may choose to view or add to a tour later. 

gallerypal custom tour select_iphone12bl

DAY  5: TEST

Friday was about user interviews and testing my solution. In a traditional sprint these interviews would be held in person, but for the purposes of this modified sprint (and a global pandemic that you may have heard about) these interviews were held virtually. 

Luckily I had a willing pool of art enthusiasts and museum-goers to participate, and I held 30 minute moderated interviews with 5 different participants. Putting the product of the last 4 days of work in front of potential users was gratifying and provided some great insights. 

The reception was positive to the expandable artwork highlights on each work, although one user said the type was too small for them to read well. This may have been the result of the testing scenario, as viewing a mobile prototype on a desktop (in this case an Invision prototype) sets the viewer back further from the screen than normal, which is something to consider for future tests.

I gained some great insights into how I would go forward with the project and  expand the social and customizable features of the app to best improve the in-person viewing experience.

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