GalleryPal
What is GalleryPal?
Role
UX Designer
GalleryPal is a Design Sprint project from Google Ventures.
learn more about what a design sprint is here
GalleryPal is an app aimed to improve user experience when visiting art galleries and art museums.
Scope
UX Designer
Tools
UX Designer
Solution
Design Process
GalleryPal is a new startup with a new goal in mind. They recently discussed and gathered a lot of feedback about how they can improve museum and gallery experience. They brought me on board to run a five-day design sprint to quickly test possible solutions, while following a few design constraints:
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Focus on improving the in-person viewing experience.
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The solution is to be designed as a mobile-app.
Day 1
I began by synthesizing research that was previously done by GalleryPal. The research consisted of seven user interviews who expressed their problems when visiting museums and galleries. By studying the interview highlights, I was able to gather themes and insights such as:
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People who visit galleries or museums need to have easy and quick access to art information when visiting.
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Providing the proper information without overwhelming the users is a current challenge.
By understanding what the users struggle with, I was able to define the problem and turned it into opportunities of design.
How might we?
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How might we be able to give users art information anytime they want?
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How might we provide information without overwhelming the users?
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How might we help users plan their visits?
Mapping
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I started with a user map to illustrate how users would reach their goals. Within the map a user would:
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Be able to scan an artwork and get specific information about it.
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Be able to search museums and their galleries and learn more about the art before visiting.
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Be able to check and schedule tours for different museums.
Day 2
Lightning Demos
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Before sketching out solutions, I conducted lightning demos to find inspiration and explore existing solutions from other products.
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I was able to gather ideas from different apps. I thought it was interesting to gather inspiration from apps that served different purposes because It led to a wider variety of ideas of how things work. A few ideas I was able to gather are listed below:
Crazy 8's
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I then moved on to sketch possible solutions for my most important screens by using the crazy 8’s method. I’ve decided that the information screen will be the most important since users will spend most of their time in the app reading valuable information about the artworks.
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It’s important that the information view is clean and organized, as users have expressed frustrations about unorganized and unnecessary information.
Day 3
It’s decision day! Moving on from the sketches made yesterday, I went ahead and choose what I thought was the most intuitive design among the critical screens. I made a solution sketch to show the interaction a user will have before and after the most critical screen.
Solution Sketch
Depending on how the users enter the information screen, either via search or through scan, they will be directed to the main information screen under the artwork’s main information tab.
Within the screen, users will be able to navigate between different tabs in regards to the artwork’s information. Information will be displayed under different tabs to avoid overwhelming the users.
Tabs will include informations about the artwork and artist, artist's comments and process if available.
Day 4
The fun part, designing! Prior to making a prototype, I created a style guide to help myself stay consistent within the brand. Since users will spend a lot of time navigating through pages and reading text, I wanted to use elements that are calm for the eyes. I went ahead and used a combination of Sage green to evoke a feeling of calmness, and off-white mixed with legible font for easy readability.
Gathering all my ideas from mapping, sketches and branding, I was able to create a mockup.
Below are the images and the prototype for the GalleryPal app!
Final Design
Day 5
Lastly, I conducted a Remote moderated usability test with five participants to validate the design that was created. I invited users who were into arts and galleries, and users who often visit museums.
I was happy with how the results came out during the usability tests. Although with minor confusion from some participants, All five were still able to complete the tasks successfully. The participants thought that the flow and interface were clean and easy to use. Lastly, they all especially liked the scanning feature.
If I had more time..
If I had more time, I would of loved to work on changing some icons to give out a clearer message, and work on a feature where users are notified when a favorite museum of theirs have new collections, events, or anything worth knowing.
Learnings & Retrospect
1. Time management
Due to the one week constraint of this project I had to plan every steps from day one and make sure that I am able to follow through with my plans each day. Although difficult at first, I was able to adjust and see the importance of organizing your time accordingly.
2. Self-control
Since my time with this project was only limited to one week, I couldn't afford to waste time or procastinate on my planned schedule. There were days where I felt lazy or tired to do work, so I motivated myself to push through it and complete the tasks ahead. I learned how having self-control is important in this field in order to get work done.
What’s next? More Design Sprints!
GalleryPal was a project to teach me the process of design sprinting. Regarding the prototype’s future, I myself am not quite sure what will happen to it, but one thing that I know for sure is that through this experience I was able to learn a new skill and process within the UX world, and that I am definitely looking forward to do more design sprints in the future.