GalleryPal

Driving guest satisfaction through interactive museum experiences

Team & roles

Jesh Anies - UX Research & Design
Laura Trouiller - Mentor

Project Duration

May 3-7, 2025

Responsibilities

Research Synthesis, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing

Making the museum experience more immersive

Museums and galleries are trying to increase customer satisfaction when viewing art. From paintings, to sculptures, and installations, GalleryPal wants to design a way to improve the experience of viewing art in a museum. They have brought me on board to run a design sprint to quickly test out a possible solution.

The constraints for this sprint include:

  • Improving the in-person viewing experience

  • Delivering a solution designed as a mobile app or mobile-optimized website

GalleryPal wanted their solution to be designed for mobile devices. I focused on the user's experience while at the museum, so a mobile phone is the most accessible, and common option for users in that scenario.

The problem

Museum and gallery visitors often struggle to fully engage with or understand the art they are viewing, leading to a less satisfying in-person experience. Gallerypal recognizes there is an opportunity to enhance the viewing experience using devices that visitors already carry with them—their smartphones.

The solution

Design mobile MVP features that enhance the in-person museum experience through art profile pages, nearby art suggestions, map integration, artwork scanning, and journaling.

Day 1 - Map

User Interviews

GalleryPal conducted user interviews and research. Participants were asked to tell about a recent time they visited an art museum or gallery. Here’s an overview of their recent experiences:

  • Sometimes I'll do a quick Google search for a painting while on my phone while at the museum ... but I usually just find long articles that are super overwhelming.

  • I enjoy looking at art, but sometimes I feel like I'm missing out on the full experience by not knowing any background information or context.

  • I don't really enjoy group tours because I like to do my own thing ... but sometimes I listen in to learn a few facts about the artist, or the piece itself.

  • I like to form my own opinion about art, but it can be hard to do that when I don't really know anything about the artist, or what their intentions were in creating the work.

  • There are so many times I find myself saying 'how did the artist do that?!' - I would love to know more about their process and technique.

  • I may do a little research before my visit, but I always find a work of art that catches my eye that I didn't read about beforehand

  • I often wonder - what would the artist tell me about this piece if they had a minute to talk to me? How cool would that be?!?

Key Interview

One particular interview conducted between Joe Formica, Lead Researcher for GalleryPal, and Lena Caroll, Tour Guide at The Museum of Natural History, New York, gave me valuable insight to the relationship between customer satisfaction and viewing art as she worked directly with museum goers.

As I reviewed their conversation, I looked out for answers to these questions that would give me more context into understanding the problem:

  • What helps guests have a better experience?

  • What area of the guest experience could be improved?

  • Quotes or insights

Here’s what I found:

  • In their conversation, Lena pointed out that guests connect with the story behind the art. Her method includes a combination of context, the artist, history and the actual process and technique of the art itself.

  • Lena mentioned that her hope was for guests to get something more out of it instead of walking around by themselves. Sometimes they miss a detail or overlook a detail. Her method of approach is to go in objectively so that guests come out with their own opinion.

  • “Look closely at the work and reflect what it means to them.”

    “Artwork is meant to understand yourself.”

Thematic Analysis

With all the insights gathered during user interviews, I organized my findings using an affinity diagram to find overarching themes under a thematic analysis:

I organized my affinity diagram even further in FigJam so that it's much easier to read and navigate the content. After synthesizing my data, I boiled down the insights to 4 key findings:

  • Participants have noted that they’ve expressed their frustration with having to sift through too much. As Nick explains, “Sometimes I'll do a quick Google search for a painting while on my phone while at the museum ... but I usually just find long articles that are super overwhelming.” Another participant suggested that it’d be valuable if the artist could tell guests about the art if they had a minute to talk about it. Even Lena, with limited time, has to adjust and provide information in tidbits when presenting information about art during her tours.

  • It is said that museum goers know there's good art, but they don't know why yet. This was something Lena observed working at the The Museum of Natural History saying, “typical museum goers don't know much about the art before going in.” In another interview, Claire points out that she always finds a work of art that catches her eye that she didn't read about beforehand.

  • It was important that participants learned about the art to better connect with it. When Lena gives tours at work, her goal is to help guests create a story to better connect with the art. The key information can be categorized in three ways:

    1. Background & context

    2. Process & technique

    3. About the artist

  • As mentioned, Lena mentioned that her hope was for guests to get something more out of it instead of walking around by themselves. Sometimes they miss a detail or overlook a detail. Her method of approach is to go in objectively so that guests come out with their own opinion. As a bonus, perhaps the guest finds a deeper understanding about themselves by reflecting on the art.

Persona

Thanks to GalleryPal, I was provided a persona to better understand museum guests and synthesize the insights gathered. Meet Angela.

How Might We

Once all of the research was done, I brainstormed a list of guiding questions which set the foundation for providing a solution to the problem:

  1. How might we enhance access to key information about the artwork?

  2. How might we increase reflection for users after experiencing the art?

I also considered a few other questions but weren’t prioritized due to the time constraints and other factors:

  • How might we encourage research prior to a guest’s museum visit? I opted not to dive deeper into this because this felt more like a marketing/awareness issue instead of a user experience issue.

  • How might we bring awareness to long-form content or information for museum goers? I opted not to dive deeper into this because based on participant insights, museum guests prefer receiving bitesize information about the art. I could include a way to resolve this during the sprint but will not be prioritized for this project.

MVP

Based on the How Might We framework, I then brainstormed what the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) would be to solve those two questions. I came up with four which include:

  1. Art profile

  2. List of nearby art

  3. Map

  4. Journal

User Stories 

After brainstorming, I fleshed out user stories that would be included in the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). I focused on core scenarios that enhance access key information about the artwork and increase reflection for users after experiencing the art.

  • As someone

    Visiting a museum 

    I want to...

    View key information for a piece of art 

    so that...

    I can get a quick overview of the art

  • As someone

    Visiting a museum 

    I want to...

    Automatically preview a list of nearby art (based on my location within the museum)

    so that...

    I can access key information for a piece of art 

  • As someone

    Visiting a museum 

    I want to...

    Interact with a map to locate a  piece of art 

    so that...

    I can access key information about said art

  • As someone

    Reviewing key information for a piece of art 

    I want to...

    Journal my thoughts

    so that...

    I can reflect my opinions about a piece of art

User Flow

I then mapped out user flows to help me visualize the various scenarios a user undergoes to accomplish each task from the four MVPs.

Day 2 - Sketch

Lightning Demos

To get started, I researched examples of mobile apps. I focused on features that I would need to build for the solution including art profiles, nearby art, map and journal features. I also stumbled upon inspiration for location services and a scan feature that could be helpful to include.

MVP

Art Profiles

American Museum of Natural History - Explorer

Google Arts & Culture

Smartify

Explorer along with Arts & Culture do a great job of highlighting the key information. Though it is more detailed than I prefer, Smartify gets an honorary mention for the fact that users can scroll horizontally between key information.

Nearby Art

American Museum of Natural History - Explorer

National Museum in your pocket

Smartify

The general consensus from my finding is that recommendations nearby me are represented by cards. Some utilized a horizontal scroll. After looking at this, I thought it would be cool to include the user’s distance from the nearby art.

Map

American Museum of Natural History - Explorer

National Museum in your pocket

Both Explorer and National Museum use a map with nearby recommendations underneath. I appreciated how art was contained in an ellipse for Explorer.

Journal

Journal

Day One

The ability to journal does not appear in museum apps but perhaps there's a way to incorporate them. Looked at journaling apps that give the user the option to type something from a template or a prompt. Users can add photos and include how they feel, which could be useful for reflecting on art.

Non-MVP

Location services

American Museum of Natural History - Explorer

Scan

Smartify

Crazy 8 sketches

Next, it was time to put pen to paper and sketch out how the user interface for each MVP would potentially look like. I utilized the crazy 8s method to quickly iterate different variations for the most critical screens.

Art Profiles

Nearby Art

Map

Journal

Solution Sketch

After sketching variations of the critical screens, I put together a solution sketch that highlights the journey the user takes from the home page, which includes ‘Nearby art’ cards. From then the user could either interact with the map or select a nearby art card which would direct the user to the art profile page. This page would have a horizontal scroll that users can scroll through to learn more about the art itself, with the key information being the first card. From here. The user may also click on the journal icon that would trigger the journal page to swipe upwards and allow the user to jot down any reflections they’ve made about the art.

Day 3 - Decide

Storyboard

Once the solution was sketched, I storyboarded the full journey a user can take from opening the app to interacting with the art. The additional screens here include a login screen followed by an ‘enable location services’ page. Something that I didn’t consider as I made these sketches but will consider for the prototype include: 

  • An icon for the user to get directions to the art in the museum from the art profile page. Though it’s not an MVP for this exercise, I thought it’s worth including to flesh the art profile page to resemble an app that has been already developed and launched. 

  • A toast overlay to notify the user for making a journal post after they’ve jotted down their reflection. 

While those things weren’t present, I had a solid foundation for building the prototype in Figma; one step closer to bringing the solution to life.

Day 4 - Prototype

Hi-fidelity Prototype

A strong direction set from my storyboard allowed me to dive into building a high fidelity prototype that users can interact with. Here is where I applied a comprehensive design system that factors in branding, type, visuals, spacing, hierarchy and live copy. A logo with a serif typeface was chosen for its association with tradition, high class and the culture surrounding the fine arts. Given the time constraints, I went with a black and white approach, along with Inter for the type system, to streamline my production process. This worked in my favor as elements allowed the artwork to shine with their colors. These decisions were factored in so that the UX closely resembles a fully developed app.

Day 5 - Test

Usability Test

After building a high-fidelity prototype for GalleryPal, usability testing was conducted to evaluate the app’s overall usability, identify any friction points, and assess whether users can navigate key features intuitively. After testing with 5 participants, insights and feedback were logged regarding user behavior to help refine the interface.

Overall reactions from participants garnered positive feedback, with participants praising the attention to detail applied given the time constraints of the project. They successfully navigated through key app features while identifying improvements to the user experience - most of them could be easily adjusted.

Below is how the prototype was updated based on user feedback…

🟠 Major Feedback

Given how similarly the explore page and the map page look, participants found it jarring that the pages weren’t connected. To solve this, I used Figma’s smart animate features so that components seamlessly flowed between the explore page and map screens.

🟡 Minor Feedback

The adjustments I made to the interface using smart animate also resolved this minor suggestion: implement a way to access the scan tool from the map view. This comes as users wanted to scan something from the map view given the fact that it felt like it was tied to the explore page, assuming they are one screen.

🟢 Normal Feedback

Simple edits included…

  • Making artwork clickable on all map views as one participant instinctively clicked on the art from the mini map view on the explore page.

  • Establish cohesion between font usage. One participant noticed inconsistencies with type styling for the information under an art profile.

Other feedback to consider

While I was able to implement most feedback from usability testing, there were a few valuable suggestions that weren't resolved. Here are a few examples…

  • Redesign the journal icon for better clarity. Only one participant highlighted this issue so I didn’t think it was a problem for the majority of users.

  • Consider implementing personalized journal entry display in art profiles as one participant thought it would establish a sense of continuity after making a journal entry.

Takeaways

What I learned

  • Given the time constraints, I couldn’t cover all the How Might We questions. This forced me to focus on what’s most critical to improving customer satisfaction when viewing art.

  • Since I had a short amount of time to bring my solution to life, it was important to use whatever tools were at my disposal to visualize what it could be. Sketching allowed me to iterate quickly so that I felt confident bringing it into Figma with little-to-no edits afterwards.

  • Learning this tool to seamlessly merge screens opens up the door for more creative solutions that would’ve felt difficult to convey with static transitions.

What I would do (or like to do) differently

  • The amount of work that goes into a sprint is a lot of work that eases the load when divided up between people. Segmenting out the work opens up room for each team member to focus on tasks to deliver high-quality work when combined.

  • Despite designing for MVPs, I didn’t find it ideal to design a mobile app from the ground-up in addition to the features. The brief for this assignment assumes that GalleryPal is an already established brand and product but I had to determine that along the way, giving me less time to prioritize the MVPs.

  • Given the research I was provided, it would be neat to consider the other How Might We questions with the GalleryPal team. That way we don’t alienate the other issues that users face when doing their own research prior to a guest’s museum visit, as well as, an option to access long-form content or information for museum goers.

Selected Works