Museums: It’s time for a change!
UX/UI Ironhack’s Wicked Problem | Case Study
Museums, as we all know them, have given a lot to our society. From being the bridge between objects and people, to being the kind of institution that keeps the heritage for us to enjoy and for future generations.
In recent years, due to different events and the current worldwide situation, the number of visitors in the museums has decreased, falling into a profound crisis.
During this first week as students of UX/UI Design, it is now of our interest to study the possible reasons, applying the Design Thinking methodology to find the pain points and finally turn them into possible opportunities of improvement.
Stage 1: Discover
For this first stage, my team and I, we had to start getting used to the know-how of the methodology. Our first approach was with the Quantitative and Qualitative Methods throughout surveys and interviews. This was our first challenge!
For the Quantitative Method, we focused on collecting information by conducting a Survey in Google Forms based on demographics, number of times visiting a museum, preferences of museums, planning and their experiences during the visit. We had a pretty good response and this helped us to better understand how visitors think and feel, when they go to a museum.
In the Qualitative Method, we conducted 6 interviews where we had the chance to collect more data from the people interviewed. In a 1:1 and with opened-ended questions.
Stage 2: Define
In order to interpret the results we had so far, and to get to know the How May We’s, we used the Affinity Diagram where we were able to determine 6 general aspects of why people are not visiting museums.
- Social: People prefer more activities around the exhibitions.
- Aesthetic: Sometimes, the layout of the exhibitions is not interesting.
- User Issues: Exhibitions very “classic” and boring.
- Security: Covid and long queues.
- Technology: Not a lot of people make use of the technology in exhibitions.
- Financial: Exhibitions are expensive and it is hard to buy tickets.
Once we cleared out the statements, we voted and decided that our main HMW’s were in the technology, security and social aspects.
Visitors want:
- To buy tickets online.
- Not wasting time, avoiding long queues.
- Exhibitions up-to date.
- To have more activities resulting in a rewards program.
Once we had this information gathered, we started building our Personas. This persona is not really one person, it’s a group of details from all the personalities of the people we interviewed. From here, we took all the main characteristics and designed our Empathy Map. We wanted to visualize who we were empathizing with, so we filled the map with all the behaviors and statements we collected and we ended up building up 2 type of personas, Max and Gabrielle.
For this regard we focused on Max. He is a student of software engineering, he likes to do outdoor activities because he is an explorer. He is single, he lives alone and works part-time in a coffee shop.
He describes himself as a creative person, he loves to socialize and to hang out with his friends. However he likes to take care of his finances and save money wherever he can. In his free time, he enjoys doing sports, but he’s a little lazy.
After this exercise, we used some mapping techniques, so we created Max’s Storyboard and also his Journey Map to understand his motivations and experiences when visiting a museum.
Stage 3: Develop
For the Ideation process, we used the generation of good and the bad ideas, that helped us to have an accurate representation of the visitors with clear understanding of our personas and their different moments, feelings and their interests and motivations.
Low-fi Prototyping
Here we wanted to create an app that gave a possible solution to the findings in the HMW’s. This app needed to be navigation friendly throughout the process of planing a visit to a museum, as well as a short way to check-out, and to be able to buy a ticket through the rewards program.
The experience starts with a simple login with one click. The second step is planning a visit based on preferences (filtered by cities, type of museum and budget). Step 3, once the visitor finds their favorite museum, he will have a new experience full of interactive activities during the visit to the exhibitions, which as a result will develop the reward program. Step 4, the user selects the number of visitors and also has the option to buy tickets the normal way. Step 5, as a new feature, the user will be able to buy tickets through the reward program with just one click, and once they buy the tickets online, it will include the possibility to access the museum with the express queue. With these new features, the user will avoid the crowds, buying tickets will be very fast and secure and of course the user will save money.
Stage 4: Deliver
In this last stage of our process, testing was in a very early stage, so we were not able to get a very detailed insight.
On the scale from 1 to 10 on how easy was to buy the tickets. (1 is the hardest and 10 the easiest) 67% rated the experience a 7 and 33% rated it a10. However, we wanted to know if buying tickets through the rewards program, with less clicks was the fastest way, compared to other regular payments methods.
Conclusion:
Iterate, iterate, iterate…!
My conclusions are now more defined after learning the design thinking methodology. I realized that this is a never-ending process where I have to find a solution for every problem, even to create one when it does not exist. Also, not to focus on too many problems because I can’t solve them all. Basically, find solutions for the well-being and satisfaction of the stakeholders and the users.
