Introduction

When going to an art museum or gallery, most people have little to no knowledge of what artworks or artists will be on display. Little research, if any, is done beforehand and most people expect to learn through a guided tour, reading the small information cards next to the art, or listening to the provided audio through a headset. This is good for learning who created the art and what materials they used but it provides no real substance or background and fails to give an adequate explanation of meaning or intent. In essence, those cards briefly provide the who and the what, maybe even the when and where, but never the why and how.

GalleryPal is the solution for that lack of immediate information. It is a mobile application that allows museum and gallery goers to quickly pull up all of the relevant information about an art piece they see in person. Whenever someone is touring an art museum or gallery, they can simply pull out their phone, type in the title of the artwork or scan it using the camera, and receive a wealth of information about it. Some relevant information will include the artist's background, the context of the time period, and facts that give greater insight into why and how the artist created it.

GalleryPal started as a practice prompt provided by BitesizeUX and was chosen out of a list of 7 possible design briefs. This project was conducted by myself as a modified, condensed version of a Google Ventures design sprint consisting of one week of work. The format of the sprint is meant to get a possible solution prototype made and tested as soon as possible to then determine if the solution works as intended. Each day of the sprint week had a specific goal and set of deliverables due. The user interview videos and quotes were provided to me and it was my job to review the research material and begin mapping out solutions.

Day One: Map

On the first day of the sprint, the main objective is to solidify an understanding of the problem space and to map out what a solution could be. The day began with reviewing the design brief in full, reading and watching all of the provided documentation. The brief, as presented, is that museums and galleries are trying to increase customer satisfaction when viewing art. GalleryPal wants to design a way to improve the experience of viewing art in a museum or gallery. The design constraints were that it had to be a mobile app and had to focus specifically on the in-person viewing experience.

Within the research documentation, I was provided with a series of responses from real people to the statement, “tell us about a recent time you visited an art museum or gallery.” Most of the responses centered around wanting to know more information about the art and artists on display than the gallery or museum provided. I was also given a video recording of a UX researcher interviewing a tour guide from the Museum of Modern Art about her role as a provider of information at a large museum and what type of facts best resonate with guests.

Lastly, I was given a persona that helped in determining who the app would be marketed to and what their feelings are about art. The persona’s name is Angela and she is a 23 year old junior art director living in New York City. She is a fairly new resident of New York and is a fan of going to local art museums every few months. This is a quote by Angela regarding the problem at hand,

“I enjoy going to the museum, but I often leave feeling like I didn’t appreciate the art to its full potential. I don’t need to know everything, I just don’t want to feel like I was missing out on something.”

Once the problem space was fully understood using the wealth of provided material, I set out to create a handy visual that would map out the journey a user would take to accomplish that goal. To begin, I placed the target user on the left of the page and the goal they are trying to accomplish on the right of the page. I then started placing steps that would logically connect the two. It took a couple of attempts to get it just right but by the end of the work day I had a useful map that would go on to guide the project and prevent it (and myself) from veering off-track.

GalleryPal’s map showing a typical user on the left and their main goal on the right

The map is mostly linear, starting with the user walking around a museum and finding an interesting art piece and ending with that user reading all of the desired information about that piece and leaving the museum more satisfied than if they hadn’t used the app. The main deviation from this linear progression is in the middle of the map where users have a choice for how they want to proceed. They can choose to either type the piece’s name or to use GalleryPal’s innovative artwork scan feature that uses reverse-image-search technology to identify which artwork it is.

Both paths take users to the same place and which path a user selects is dependent on whether they are directly in front of the artwork to scan it or not. The map also cycles back on itself once a user has read all that they would like about an art piece. Ideally, a museum guest would read and/or listen to all of the information they wish about one particular artwork, then continue to walk around and repeat this process for all of the art they wish to learn about. The cycle only ends when the user is satisfied and leaves the museum or gallery having learned a lot more than if they hadn’t used GalleryPal.

Day Two: Sketch

On Tuesday of the sprint week, My goal was to take the map I created on day one and sketch out a handful of ideas that attempt to solve the focal problem. I started the day by doing a brief competitive analysis and reviewing other companies that have attempted to solve the same problem I am. This began with searching different app stores for keywords like, “museum,” “gallery,” “ art,” “history” and seeing what came up. I then took screenshots of relevant screens from each app and compiled a folder of them to act as inspiration as well as key things to avoid.

A sample selection of screenshots of different art history and museum apps

With these inspirational screenshots in-hand, and a good mental picture of the art gallery app landscape, I began putting pen to paper and sketching out ideas. I began by conducting a crazy-8s exercise which is crafted to help designers leave doubt at the door and get as many ideas out of their head and onto the page as possible. I picked the crucial part of the map to explore ideas for, that being the scanning and art information pages. I then separated a page of graph paper into eight sections, set an eight minute timer, and within those restraints brainstormed eight different looks and forms the app could possibly take.

Crazy 8s exercise for GalleryPal

This exercise was a deviation for how I would normally sketch design ideas. Normally, I would make a sketch and then continue to iterate on it, removing things that don’t work while adding new things that do. Crazy 8s was good for getting me out of my comfort zone because it didn’t give me time to think if what I was sketching was good or not. I used it to explore different views of the same screen, as well as where things should be placed within the app.

Once the eight minutes was up and I now had eight different rough scribbles of possible directions to take GalleryPal, I took the time to refine and add detail to the three most key pages of the app. The key screens I chose to refine first were the art scanning feature, the results page and the artwork page. With those screens drawn, the project began to take form and it became clear what direction it was headed towards.

Less rough sketches of the critical scanning, results, and artwork screens

The scanning feature is to aid users by allowing them to simply hold their phone up to the art piece and letting the app do all the work to identify the correct art piece. Instructions are given on screen and users just need to center the art within the app’s crossheirs. The user is then taken to the results screen where they can select the art piece they scanned, or scan again if needed. Once selected, the user can read and/or listen to all of the information their heart desires about the history of the piece and who created it.

Day Three: Decide

With a series of different sketches all ranging in levels of fidelity, I now had a general idea of how GalleryPal would look. I took my refined sketches and continued sketching new screens until I felt the app had all that it needed to be an MVP (minimum viable product). As I sketched, I kept wondering which screens I had yet to design and which could maybe be discarded to keep the app simple. To help myself keep track of screens, I sketched a small checklist that I could use to mark-off completed drawings and keep track of which ones I still had to design.

GalleryPal’s screen sketch checklist

With this checklist in-hand, I had everything I needed to design each screen GalleryPal would need. Each screen in the checklist had just enough detail to get a sense of what the screen would look like, but no detail. Going one-by-one, I would pick an undrawn screen and refine it as before to bring them up to the fidelity of my critical screen sketches from the day before. The explore page I eventually decided was redundant because the homepage would have ‘featured art’ and ‘near you’ sections.

A sample selection of GalleryPal’s finalized sketches

After the scanning, results, and artwork screens, I started on the first screens users would see when opening GalleryPal. A welcome screen and homepage were obvious starting points as a user’s first impression of a new mobile app is crucial to get right. I wanted the homepage to serve as a hub that displays a user’s last viewed art, featured art, as well as galleries and museums near them currently. I also designed the search screen with different ways to sort and view the results. I wanted to allow users to be able to look closely at any particular art piece so I included the ability to view an artwork full screen.

With the sketches complete, the project had a face and when placed in the right order, a perceivable user flow. Drawing things out greatly helps me visualize a product and how that product could look and behave. By doing most of the designing work early during the sketching phase, it makes digitizing them and/or creating a prototype much quicker and easier because most of the minor design decisions made on each screen are easier to iron out on paper as opposed to a design program.

Day Four: Prototype

In the morning of day I started the process of converting my sketches into digital wireframes and creating a believable prototype that I could then test on potential users. This began with choosing the correct tool for the job. I first thought of using Figma because I am most familiar with it, but I decided against it because Figma is very in-depth and expansive. I chose to use Marvel because they have a lot of built-in assets and components that I could simply drag-and-drop wherever needed in order to quickly build the prototype.

A selection of screens from the GalleryPal prototype

As stated before, most of the difficult design decisions had already been made during the sketching phase and the prototype came together smoothly. For simplicity and a fast turnaround, I only made the artwork page for The Girl With the Pearl Earring and the museum page for the Hague. The prototype was very lightweight, only consisting of 10 screens total, but provided enough detail for people to fill in the gaps with their minds and run a usability test.

Prototype Demonstration Video

Day Five: Test

Once I was happy with the prototype I created on the previous day, I began the most important part of the entire sprint; testing to see if it works as intended. The first step was drafting a testing script that would guide me during each interview and solidify the tasks I would have each tester attempt to complete. As opposed to my last testing sessions for previous products, I wanted to make these tests more casual and conversational to build rapport and put testers at ease. This technique really aided the people I was testing to be more honest and forthcoming with any feedback they had.

Some of the key takeaways of the testing was that it was very positively received by all testers. Every person who tested the prototype visits art galleries or museums at least twice a year and is generally interested in art and art history. The positively received aspects include the scan feature, the audio lessons for each art piece, and the museum information screen. When asked directly, most of the testers divulged that they would surely use the app if it existed with full functionality.

Negatively received things were few and far between but I was still given ideas of edits and additions I could make. One thing that was brought up multiple times was that users were unsure they were able to tap on the museum name on the artwork information screen. This could be fixed by simply coloring the text differently and/or underlining it or adding an arrow. Another suggestion was to change the verbiage of “No? Maybe these” on the scan results screen to something more clear. Most suggestions were minor issues that could be fixed by simply altering text.

One of the more interesting things brought up in the tests was one user who compared the app to a beer tasting and recording app called Untapped. He even pulled out his phone to show me the app, which I had not heard of previously. Untapped allows users to log when they try a new type of beer and rate it from 1 to 10. The app even has a social aspect where users create a profile and can share it with friends to showcase your favorite and least favorite brews. He suggested a similar type of social component for GalleryPal where friends can share their favorite art, artists, and museums with others.

Conclusions

Conducting a Google Ventures design sprint was a good lesson in designing just enough that is needed to test an idea. I can see the sprint being a great place to start if and when I need to solve a problem quickly and cheaply. It doesn't provide a lot of time to make a good-looking, high fidelity design but enough to get the solution’s point across to people in order to test it. With it being my first sprint, I certainly learned a lot about time-boxing my work effectively and relegating separate tasks for specific times and days.

The initial problem was that sometimes people who visit art galleries or museums leave them feeling like they could have learned more, at least about the pieces they really liked. The solution needed to be a mobile application and it was meant to improve the in-person viewing experience. GalleryPal does a good job of providing the main bits of information up-front and allowing users to explore more if they wish. I am happy with the prototype I created for GalleryPal and it got positive reactions from everyone who looked at it. It is clear that there is a market for an application like it in app stores around the world.