Role - Research, UX, UI & testing
Location - Remote
Duration - 20 weeks

Project overview

Visitation is an analytical platform created for Centraal Museum Utrecht (& Trive Technology) to view information about their visitors. The purpose of the platform is to give the museum insight into which specific age category and gender looks at/is interested in which type of art. Based on this, the museum wants to address their target groups more specifically for future exhibitions so that they can attract more visitors. The end goal of this is to help Trive Technology alleviate the workload they spend on field research to provide more information to Centraal Museum. I was responsible for the research, design, testing and delivery of the prototype.

Problem

Trive Technology is working on a research project for Centraal Museum Utrecht. They do this by means of to conduct field studies with visitors. In addition to subjective information they get from interviews, they have no insight into measurements/measurable data, which is a problem for the research. Trive would like to support the customer even better in customer research by means of an interactive product that provides insight into physical museum visits through: measurable data for its employees.

Client

Trive Technology is a Design Agency in Amsterdam. The company specializes in websites, apps, branding. The company consists of UX, UI, visual Design, development, marketing & communication.

Target group

Centraal Museum Utrecht is the main museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, founded in 1838. The museum has a wide-ranging collection, mainly of works produced locally.

The Source

Museum visitors are the source of information. The solution must provide the museum with access to visitors' museum experiences. The source of information for this project are museum visitors who visit museums in their spare time based on their own interests, visit museums once in a while.

1.0 Research phase

Technical research

First, the technological aspect was investigated to come up with a concept. To this end, research has been conducted into existing technologies with which data can be measured.

With the most important findings, a comparison chart has been set up with technical applications to make the best choice for devising a concept.

Ideas - concepts

I have come up with 3 concepts to collect data about museum visitors during their visit while following an audio tour.

Concepts

  1. An audio tour using a smart phone (sensors) and QR codes (which the museum already has!) and possible beacon per room.

  2. An audio tour through a walkie-talkie that works with NFC tags and a possible beacon per room.

  3. An Arduino board installation per room with an accelerometer to collect information about the movement of visitors.

Pitfalls

  • NFC is not compatible with walkie-talkies. This installation is not realistic.

  • An accelerometer measures numerical data about the intensity of movement within a certain ratio. This is not useful data because it cannot separate people in terms of numbers.

End users Research

Without museum visitors, there is no data for the target group (Central Museum). I have mapped out wishes and ethical boundaries regarding audio tours and devices using online surveys and interviews.

Findings

  • 82% of participants who come to museums purely out of their own interest would like to use an audio tour during visits.

  • 65% of participants want to use a walkie-talkie as a wearable for audio tours.

  • 26% of participants prefer to use a smartphone as a wearable for audio tours.

  • 9% do not want to use an audio tour because they prefer to leave it to their own interpretation of art.

  • Participants had no objection to filling in metadata such as age category and gender for wanting to use a walkie-talkie as long as it remained anonymous and was only used to view the museum's statistics.

Concept validation

Based on the new insights, I did a concept iteration.

An audio tour for museum visitors using walkie-talkies where visitors must agree to enter age category and gender.

  • The user enters a number that corresponds to a work of art, and based on the choice, information about the work of art is read out to them (as an audio fragment from the walkie-talkie).

  • The device can then collect data such as which age category and gender is interested in which art. Listening to information per specific work of art is counted as the user's interest.

This concept was presented to Centraal Museum Utrecht. The museum already uses a web application via smartphone to provide an audio tour to visitors.

Feedback

  • They want a scalable and easily maintainable solution. That's why I decided not to go for the walkie-talkie but for the same concept, only with the web app (Media Guide) that they already have for audio tours.

  • Being able to determine walking routes would be of added value.

2.0 Design phase

Placeholders - Sketches

To first put the ideas on paper for the design, I made some placeholders. Where what type of information will be placed. At first, this was purely functionality and arranging important information.

Competitive Analysis

To create the design, I conducted a competitive analysis to identify existing options and their advantages and disadvantages.

LoFi Design

Based on research and competitive analysis, I set up a first LoFi Design in Figma.

I had a peer review conducted on this design at Trive Technology. Additionally, further research was conducted on platforms with analytics and information structures. A design iteration was made based on the new insights.

HiFi Design 1.0

  • Menu structure has been adapted to relevant information from the museum.

  • UI States buttons applied.

  • Colours are applied to bring out focus (UI).

  • Legend was added to help understand information.

After establishing the key information, I refined the platform for completeness and how the infrastructure would integrate. I created a prototype in Figma.

HiFi Design 1.1

The prototype was tested by Trive Technology employees and by Centraal Museum and was also presented at school for feedback.

The primary feedback was that the screens with circle diagrams might be less relevant to the museum, as they present information in two similar ways.

HiFi Design 2.0

  • Information made more relevant.

    • It focuses on which age groups engage with different types of art across various levels of the museum.

  • The heat map has been transformed into a table format for better clarity.

    • A heat map is not a maintainable solution for the museum. If a new space or exhibition is added into a museum, a new 3D map must be developed, which incurs costs and requires time.

  • UI improved in terms of colours, balance and consistency.

  • A walking route is added to the screen, corresponding to the order of the works of art that are scanned with the QR code per smartphone.

3.0 Test phase

Usability testing

To do the final iteration of the design, I conducted Usability tests with Trive Technology employees.

Key insights

  • The interface appears much larger when tested on an actual screen size.

  • The menu structures are not user-friendly; the side menu and top menu can be quite confusing.

  • It's important to double-check all data visualizations, as some statistics convey the same information but are represented differently.

Final Design 3.0

Following the usability tests, I completed the final design iterations and created a fully interactive prototype.

Final Product

Figma prototype

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