Enhancing the art gallery experience with an iOS app
Bootcamp work: design sprint
Thanks to Freepik.com for the beautiful mockup.
Background
Art galleries are fun, engaging spaces where the public can come in to see and buy art. GalleryPal wants to enhance that experience using a mobile app. The GalleryPal team has already talked with gallery visitors and a tour guide, and they’ve provided me with a summary of their insights. I ran a design sprint to come up with a proposal for a mobile app to create.
My role
This was a bootcamp project, so I was working solo. I ran all parts of competitive analysis, ideation, prototyping, user testing, and presenting my design proposal. In the future, I'd like to include things like stakeholder voting and group consensus.
Project overview
This project sprint took five days. In that time, I looked at the provided research, ran competitive analysis, created sketches and storyboards, tested a prototype with users, and presented my findings.
I thought about how GalleryPal can add to visitors' experience, based on what they want to know. I also included a way to monetize GalleryPal for both the artists and the gallery.
Because the iPhone dominates the art and culture market in the United States, I decided to design for iOS.
My process
I split this process into four parts:
Tools
Parsing the research
First I needed to understand the research provided by GalleryPal. I pulled insights out of the interview notes they gave me and arranged them on post it notes.
They formed three categories.
1. Structure information in a digestible way
2. People want context about the artist's life and work
3. People want context about the choices the artist made for this piece
I learned that people want several categories of information, but they get overwhelmed when they get too much all at once. I decided to use a segmented control so visitors have easy access to different categories.
This brings visitors to the information category they want, very quickly.
Camera-based search saves time
GalleryPal is meant to enhance the gallery experience, not replace it. I wanted to keep users out of their phones and engaged in the gallery experience for as much time as possible. To reduce time spent typing, I shifted the search feature from a typed input to a camera input. By searching with their camera lens:
• Visitors don’t have to shift their physical position to go look for the artist information card • They don’t have to shift their mental attention to typing • They can continue to admire the art while they search for information
The artwork seen throughout this build is by one of my favorite artists.
Olafur Eliasson was not involved with this project, but he's involved in a lot of really cool initiatives. Visit his website here.
I looked at eight apps to explore how camera-based search is already being used. I looked at what these apps do, and how their interfaces are shaped.
• Blippar • Google Lens • House of Holland • Max Factor • PeakFinder • PictureThis • Plant Spot • Sam’s Club Scan N Go
Sketches and storyboards
The camera-based search was based on the iOS camera, and doesn't need extra image controls.
The next step was to design the information cards. I used Crazy 8s to generate a bunch of ideas.
I sorted through my sketches, compared them with the post its from the competitive analysis, and created some basic storyboards to show how people might move through GalleryPal. I was experimenting with different navigation styles, but for the prototype I stuck with the iOS segmented controls to increase learnability.
Prototyping
GalleryPal offers a lot of helpful info, but the goal is to keep visitors immersed in the art gallery. Because of that, there's no app dashboard. Instead, the app offers a quick how-to on its first boot after install, and then it goes straight to the camera search function.
Check out the whole flow:
User Testing
I did a round of user testing with five users. Most of the feedback was positive! The biggest concern was when one user asked:
• How do I step back in the process? I want to scan another piece of art.
This was only one of five testers, but I needed to increase user control and freedom. iOS doesn't include a dedicated "back" button, but I'd include a note to use iOS's right-swipe-to-go-back interaction pattern in the handoff documentation. I also use motion as an indicator in the onboarding modal so that people recognize the camera button. That is just a temporary patch, and with more time I'd explore ways to rework the interaction.
During ideation, I wondered: can we use individual cards and swipe along the artist's timeline? I tested this with users, and they overwhelmingly preferred a gallery view.
Chronological card swipe
Gallery view
User testers also had some feature requests and suggestions:
• What if there was a QR code on the wall instead of needing to scan the art? • Could this be a website instead of an app? • What if there was a way to find other similar artists?
Time was a constraint, so I didn’t go back and do several more rounds of revision and testing (even though I wanted to), but I would recommend using some of the questions raised during testing as places to start for further explorations. In particular, I think:
• Explore using a QR code as a way to get to the info site in addition to camera search • Can GalleryPal be used to find similar artist recommendations? • Instead of requiring a download, can GalleryPal be web-based app? • We should run more tests to make sure the onboarding and in-app nav are clear enough
Presenting the work
I try to add value at every step.
For this project, I built the presentation slides to double as a series of billboards. I imagined them being posted as a sequential series in a train station, or an airport terminal, or on billboards on the road to the gallery. I used Apple's aesthetic to conjure familiar images of art galleries. Here are two of the slides:
Next steps
To build this proposal into a successful app, there’s more to do. Building out the gallery store and integrating a smooth e-commerce sales or bidding platform will be a high priority, and the information input platform will need to work well for galleries to want to adopt the system.
