Overview
Project Goal
A one-week journey (and some extra days of personal work) to develop a mobile solution to enhance museums’ connection, interaction, and engagement.
Problem
Young individuals passionate about culture often find museums unrelatable, non-interactive, and non-immersive, making them dull and difficult to comprehend.
Solution
Utilizing personal data, our mobile platform offers tailored recommendations for present and forthcoming exhibits, while serving as an engaging audioguide that harnesses LLM AI's capacity to enrich visitor experiences and interpret History.
Our journey started with extensive secondary research, exploring blog posts, museum studies, and mainstream press to uncover the challenges museums face. These include fears of crowds and terrorism, feeling overwhelmed, lack of fun, time, promotion, cultural connection, and financial constraints.
We then conducted primary research, interviewing 6 individuals and surveying 26, which informed the creation of our primary persona, Madeleine Fodero, a French junior marketing executive in Paris. Madeleine's frustrations mirror those of many cultural enthusiasts, such as lack of interaction, static exhibitions, and desire for deeper connections with artifacts. Using Madeleine's experiences, we crafted a user journey within a museum, aiming to transform her visit from one hindered by queues and disconnect to a captivating and enlightening experience.
The design process led us to ideate an application offering curated suggestions for exhibitions and cultural events, acting as an immersive audioguide enriched with sounds and explanations. Leveraging LLM generative artificial intelligence, the app would facilitate interaction between visitors and exhibited pieces, serving as an "AI companion" throughout their museum journey. We translated these ideas into tangible wireframes, refining them into a cohesive user flow. Users would receive personalized recommendations on the home page, select an exhibition of interest, and initiate a guided tour with the AI companion providing insights.
Iterative testing informed adjustments, leading to a revised version of our prototype:
We addressed confusion regarding personalized suggestions by adding a final onboarding page for users to set their preferences.
To streamline the user flow, we removed a dropdown list for selecting specific items during the tour.
The AI assistant's placement at the center of the audioguide page was distracting, so we relocated it to the right corner alongside the transcript button, simplifying the interface.
To enhance immersion, we decided against displaying the AI assistant on the navbar, making it available only during the tour.
Considering this project as a basic undertaking, our assignment was to progress to an early prototype stage in one week. In the end, we presented the following mid-fidelity prototype :
After the bootcamp concluded, I returned to this project alone, intending to clarify certain aspects and give it the stylistic touch it required. Before advancing to the High-Fidelity prototype, I addressed concerns from the mid-fidelity version, including the need for a dedicated "tickets" page for purchasing and validating tickets, adding a bookmark page, and integrating a search function for specific events or keywords. Layout adjustments were made to accommodate the new user flow and chosen style, with the navbar removed during the visit path for improved immersion.
For the moodboard, I initially drew inspiration from the Middle Ages but later expanded to incorporate a broader historical context and a touch of modernity. Tests revealed a need to balance the historical theme with a more subtle approach, aligning better with our primary persona's preferences. I shifted away from personifying the AI companion as a troubadour, opting for a neutral approach while retaining elements of historical culture in the color palette (medieval troubadour imagery) and navbar style (a medieval banner). Deliberate imperfections were maintained to evoke the authenticity of traditional art pieces, such as in the contour of the back button). The High-fidelity prototype showcases an exhibition at the Marmottan Monet Museum featuring Berthe Morisot, a prominent female figure of the impressionist movement.
Moodboard.
Style guide.
And here’s the final result after one more week of work :
With more time and resources, I would have certainly allocated additional time to thoroughly test each stage of the Mid and High-Fidelity development process, including usability and desirability tests. However, I plan to conduct these tests independently, as I strongly believe in the concept and would love to see this app developed one day.
Additionally, I would have liked to dedicate more time to refining certain screens and adding the search and profile pages, but this is a never-ending process.
Thank you for reading !