BETHANY YAO


Hello! I'm Bethany, I design and create interactive experiences with digital medias.
Design
Music
Playground
About
 Email     Twitter     Itch.io
UNLOCK ART


TIMELINE Feb 2023 - Jun 2023

PROJECT TYPE
Certificate Project / UX Design

RESPONSIBILITIES
 UX Research, UX Design

CONTEXTAs someone who regularly goes to art galleries and museums, I’ve noticed that many visitors face the challenge of understanding certain artworks, even when touring helpers like devices, brochures, or mobile apps are provided. This not only prevents people from getting a holistic experience, but also discourages them from visiting galleries again. 
And that was where the goal of this project took shape: 
To design an app that would enhance the touring experiences of gallery visitors, and make art accessible to a broader audience.

THE PROBLEM STATEMENT Art gallery and museum visitors need a quick and easy way to look up and collect information about artworks during their visits, so that they can better understand certain artworks while not breaking the experience of either themselves or other people.


THE SOLUTIONMy solution to the problem could be summarized as follows:
Incorporate intuitive search and collect functionalities to reduce the amount of effort and time users need to spend to get artwork information.




RESEARCH - INTERVIEWFollowing the Design Thinking methodology, the first step I took to approach the problem was user research. In order to better empathize with my users’ needs, I started off by outlining 3 research goals:
  • I want to understand user needs and frustrations as they use touring apps or brochures while they visit art galleries.
  • I want to understand the processes and emotions that people experience when they want to learn more about a piece of artwork.
  • I want to identify common user behaviors and experiences with navigating through an art gallery app.
With these research goals in mind, I conducted interviews with 5 participants who varied in gender, age group, and occupation. Some of them would visit art galleries regularly, while the others had only visited once or twice. After analyzing their responses and organizing them into user groups, I identified 3 major pain points:



RESEARCH - COMPETITIVE AUDITIn addition to the users, I also wanted to learn about the competitor products, which could help me identify gaps and opportunities in the market and inspire new design solutions.
Using a spreadsheet, I conducted Competitive Audits on 3 direct competitors and 2 indirect competitors, uncovering 2 major gaps:



As shown above, what I discovered through the Competitive Audits clearly aligned with the pain points previously identified. Together, they had provided further insights into how I could design my app to better address these user problems, which helped me derive the following design goals:
  • Focus on designing an app that enhances the user’s touring experience
  • Allow users to quickly and easily get information about exhibition artworks
  • Ensure the app is designed with accessibility in mind, so that all users can enjoy it effortlessly


IDEATIONIt was finally time to come up with solutions! To generate and visualize design ideas quickly, I began with sketching out a bunch of paper wireframes for each of the main screens.
Paper wireframes

After narrowing down on the set of ideas, I converted them into digital wireframes using Figma, and built a lo-fidelity prototype for testing.
Digital Wireframes

TESTING and ITERATION To get feedback on the initial design, I conducted 1 round of moderated usability study on the lo-fi prototype, and iterated on my design based on the following research insights.


FINAL DESIGN After going through more usability studies followed by multiple iterations, I landed on the final design, which I then used to create a fully interactive hi-fidelity prototype.



DESIGN SYSTEM - STICKER SHEET



Find the full Figma design file here



WHAT I’VE LEARNED
Working on this fictional app has been an exciting journey for me, because this was my first complete UX project. As I went through the design process, I’ve gained valuable knowledge in a wide range of areas. Among everything I’ve learned, here are some of the ones I think are most important:
  • Don’t make assumptions - One of the most significant things I’ve learned to exercise is empathizing with users and learning about them in order to adjust to their individual needs. In many of my past projects, I would tend to rely on my assumptions to make design decisions instead of clarifying what the user desires. However, through conducting user research in this project, I’ve realized that in order to create a product that actually addresses user problems, I need to be mindful of what products they are looking for without my own assumptions and biases involved.  Since we all have assumptions and biases, it’s important to be aware of their existence and take initiative to reduce them. By doing so, we remain open-minded to the users’ opinions and are able to accommodate to them.
  • Don’t overlook Design Principles - During the design phase of this project, I’d gained a much deeper understanding in Design principles. I found them to be very helpful for both improving a design’s usability and a design’s visuals. By understanding and utilizing design principles, I was able to reduce the amount of guesswork throughout the design process. My designs looked cleaner, and were way more consistent in terms of typography, color and spacing. Since I’m also a developer myself, I could tell how much easier this had made it to convert the design into production code.

INDEX  NEXT
2023
© BETHANY YAO