THE SOLUTION
We created a mobile app which lets kids play with pictures of objects in the museum and combine them into their own exhibit. The unique feature of our app is that they can upload the finished project to the museum's website.
The Task
Our task was to create an app which would be engaging, informative, but above all would have a unique feature leading kids to visit the museum. Successful solution of this task would solve for the museum's need of increasing the revenue, parents' desire to educate children and kids' interest in play.
The Hypothesis
Mobile technology could be used to engage children with the museum content in order to educate, entertain and encourage to visit the museum.
The Problem
New York Historical Society is a business which is interested in selling admission tickets. At the same time it's a cultural institution with a higher goal of educating and promoting knowledge and education. Attracting children to visit the museum serves both purposes.
MY ROLE
The team consisted of 2 people.
I was responsible for the following:
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creating working prototype
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writing surveys with my project partner
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contexual inquiries
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stakeholder interviews
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user interviews shared with my project partner
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comparative feature analysis
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building user flows
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buiding app map
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conducting kids usability testing
Conducting Surveys
We conducted separate surveys for children and parents to find out about museum visiting habits, as well as mobile phone habits.
The survey for parents focused on finding out if family visits museums, how often, what kind of experience it is and how this experience can be improved. The children’s surveys were geared to finding out how they used their mobile phones, what time of games they found engaging and how they perceived family time in a museum. Surveys were made with googleForms.
Contextual Inquiry
We visited the New York Historical Society to observe what children were interested in and interviewed children and their parents. We were invited to attend art classes for children in the Guggenheim and had an opportunity to observe kids' activity and talk to them about it. The main take aways were that children didn't like to observe art passively, they were interested in interactive activities and children liked to see and share their own work.
User Interviews Takeaways
KIDS
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"I love to show my artwork"
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"I like paying games"
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"I want to be noticed"
PARENTS
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Kids today like technology.
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Their attention span is low.
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I want my child to be culturally educated.
EDUCATORS
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Kids like to be validated
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Kids like to practice a lot.
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You have to make them feel successful
Competitive/Comparative Analysis
We researched mobile apps from many museums to see what they offer to engage kids as well as mobile games popular with children for feature analysis.
User Personas
As a result from our research we came up with 'user personas', composites of types of kids we are designing for. Here is our main user persona.
Home Screen Evolution
Our initial idea of a home page was to show exhibits, but it didn't test well. Instead we decided to show selection of museum photos. This solution proved to be simpler and more engaging.
RESEARCH: Surveys/Contextual Inquiry/User Interviews/User Personas
ITERATING
Testing was performed all throughout development. Final usability testing was done with 6 adults and 3 Kids. Testing with children was conducted in Elysian Charter School, Hoboken, NJ. Kids were interested and engaged for the duration of the test and were very exited about the idea of their work being shown in the museum exhibit. Some changes to the UI were made after observing how children interacted with the app. We also tested with parents and art teachers. All users were asked to perform specific tasks, for example, find an image, edit it, select it for your exhibit and upload the exhibit to the museum's website.
USABILITY TESTING
USER FLOWS
THE GOAL
The New York Historical Society is one of New York’s best hidden gems. Yet, it's one of the lesser visited museums in New York City. We came up with a native mobile app which would engage children with the mseums content in order to attract families to come visit the museum.
IDEATING
Main Idea
We created a mobile app which lets kids play with pictures of objects in the museum and combine them into their own exhibit. The unique feature of our app is that they can upload the finished project to the museum's website. When a child visits the museum and scans the exhibit's barcode, it becames available on the museum's kiosk. Our research showed that children don't like to observe passively, they want to play, create and share their work. Most kids said that they would be much more excited about visiting museums if they knew that they could see their own work.
Prototype
We created working prototype to illustate our idea. For the purposes of testing and demostrating, building the exhibit essentially means making a movie out of selected photos. It could be changed into making any game with the images of museum objects. The important thing is that the fnished project can be shared to the museum. Prototype was created in Axure.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PROTOTYPE
USER FLOWS
There are three main user flows required for the project: user flow for creating the exhibit, user flow for retrieving it in the museum, and user flow for the audit of submitted content.
SOLUTION