GalleryPal

Never miss a museum tour. This design is for
an app that gets you on a tour in progress,
maximizing your museum experience.


Design Sprint 

Five days to build and test a product design.

Day 1: Understand and Research

“How might we give people a meaningful and educational time during their visit to a museum?”

During an interview provided as secondary research, a tour guide described the unmistakable value of guided museum tours, but noted that visitors complain about missing them.

I made guided tours the focus of my design, and started by mapping ways that visitors could join tours in progress, or leave them for another.

Day 2: Sketch

I sketched any and all ideas that could be a solution, including the ones in this 8 critical screens exercise, where you draw eight frames in 10 minutes. I actually created an 8-frame  user flow with much more detail than needed.

Day 3: Storyboard

This day called for more sketching, with the goal of delving further into a chosen solution. I drew a simpler  storyboard with less detail than the previous day,  meant to lead to a prototype by showing all the essential steps in the user's experience.

This shows the rudiments of each screen for choosing and finding a tour within the museum.

Day 4: Prototype


I built mockups from my storyboard and sketches. The resulting screens were used next in usability testing sessions, which provided feedback for new versions - iterations with adjustments.

Day 5: Test

I got a lot of test feedback, provoking thoughts on just how far changes on a simple idea can improve a utilitarian app:

Show a preview of all the artwork before and during a tour

Provide a map of the museum with bathrooms, cafe, gift shop and exits

Offer a season pass purchase option

Add a dashboard with a list of the art on loan (for frequent patrons) and dates they are viewable

Send Uber Driver-like notifications informing you how far you are to the tour group you're joining

Give real times on the tour list screen, for the starting and ending time, e.g. not just "in 10 minutes"

Be able to tap a painting to get more information

Zoomable photos in the app to see close detail of art 

Have a "Settings" button for adjustments like text size

Provide a left scroll button congruent to the right scroll button

Show name/picture of object where the guide is currently located, to find her easily

Make a kid-friendly version of the app offering rewards, like a badge

Vivian:  "Why would I bother to click the "Leave this tour" button? I would just walk away."


This comment left me wondering, "What was I thinking?" 

What I learned

Testing sessions provided both gob-smacking criticism and inspiring praise.

Discussions extended into technical aspects like the role of location tracking for distance calculations and positioning the user in relation to the art pieces, and the obvious need for a guide version which should include a panic button for emergencies, a button for additional guides in case the crowd grows too large, and a way to differentiate the paid customers from the hangers-on.

Design sprints are a staple in user experience design projects and I was happy to learn simple ways to approach problems with a process that works at scale, even in the solo version.

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