A Day at the Museum



This is my thesis project at ITP. A day at the museum is an interactive screen-based application for art museum visitors to remember and share their museum experience with their friends and family after their visit



MY ROLE
Ideation, User research, Interview, UX design, Usability testing, Visual design and making responsive web and email.
TECHNOLOGY
Js/CSS/HTML and json file. Node.js and Express.Js. Heruko



THE CHALLENGE 


Art museum are always looking ways to turn casual visitors to core visitors. But compare to other kind of museums, art museums have been slow to incorporate interactive technology into the museum experience.



RESEARCH — TEST



HYPOTHESIS :

I visit an art museum at least once a month. I notice that usually art museum visitors don't come alone.
a. What are things they can do in pairs or small groups?
b. Do they like using kiosks, or using mobile app, or would try some other form factor like a interactive table?
c. How can we use technology to enhance their museum experience?


Like many visitors, I usually take photos of the art. I also take photos of the signage with information about the art and often collect the information sheets and brochures.

a. Why we taking photos in museum? Why #artselfie?
b. Do we really look back at the photo in our phone?
c. How can we remember the name of our favorite artist/ object?





FIELD RESEARCH


Case study and participant observation
I want to find a way to help museum visitors share their art museum experiences with their friends, so that they can not only talk about it but also have a way remember their visits.

After I interviewed a few museum experts and did some readings about museum experience, I have some ideas for my project. I decided to make an installation inside the art museum. Because I believe the physical space plays an important role in museum experience.







OPPORTUNITY

To prove my concept, I also did the survey and got 167 response. Unsurprisingly, making an mobile app doesn't seem to be the best solution for museum visitors.









“Compared to other kinds of museums, like science, history, children’s, and natural history museums, art museums have been slow to incorporate interactive technology into the museum experience.” 





VISUAL DESIGN & USER TESTING


By using a screen-based interactive tool, visitors can re-create and further engage with their museum visits by selecting images of their favorite pieces from the museum's collection, then printing them out as a postcard or emailing them home or to a friend.





01_ Landing page


02_ Home 







03_ Search and filter 


04_ Email sending and confirmation 








Email from "A Day at the Museum"

And visitors can send an email or printing out as a postcard in the end. Below is the email the visitor will receive after their art museum visit.

From the email, the user will see the date of their visits and related information about their favorite artist and objects. They will also receive info about the art museum, i.e upcoming exhibitions.










Demonstration Video





Watch me talk about this project ︎

Special Thanks to Sam Slover and my thesis advisor Kathleen Wilson. You can also find the beautiful code is here







Mark