MoMA

The Challenge

Recreate the in-person museum experience

MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art located in New York City. It has an evolving art collection containing almost 200,000 works of modern and contemporary art. The museum was forced to close in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a concept project, I collaborated with 2 other UX Designers to create a mobile prototype that provides users with an in-person museum experience. 

Discovery

What is MoMA doing?

We started by conducting a Heuristic Evaluation of the MoMA Audio app using the L.E.M.E.R.S. method. This gave us an opportunity to explore and discover the features MoMA had been providing.

We were surprised to learn that you could view the details of most of the museum’s art collection but its organization was not intuitive. If you were not physically present within the museum, the search function lacked context. Also, it did not allow you to enlarge the images of the art to better observe specific details, which we felt would be imperative to the immersive experience.

MoMA Audio

What are other museums doing?

In our competitive, comparative features analysis we studied three of MoMA’s direct competitors: The Met, The Guggenheim, and The Whitney. Each of these direct competitors offer unique features to view art on their websites. However, their mobile experiences lack these same features or, in some cases, they did not have a mobile experience.

Opportunities

• The Met offers users a way to view the museum online in a 360 video as a part of their “The Met 360 Project”. A feature that MoMA does not offer.

• All direct competitors have a donate button located on the landing page of their website. This provides an easy, direct way for supporters to donate.

• MoMA is currently offering a wide range of features and events on their website. This provided valuable content for a mobile app.

How are people feeling?

User interviews identified what users want and expect from their in-person museum experience. By talking to museum goers, we discovered what elements of the physical museum should be showcased within the app.

Our interviewees were tech-savvy Millennial and Gen Z museum-goers. Interviews were conducted remotely through video calls and in person.

Defining our objectives

• What features do museum-goers want?

• What do museum-goers expect and need from a mobile app?

• How are museum-goers staying connected with museum art and events?

Define

Who is the user?

Meet Ivan, our persona. The persona is a summary of the goals, needs, and frustrations of the user. This practice helped ground the product in research by keeping the primary user in mind.

We created a journey map to examine how Ivan searches and views art online, with the goal of identifying pain points that our app could address.

Design

Kicking off with a design studio to explore multiple solutions

As a team, we started the design phase in a design studio. Each of us sketched independently, simultaneously attempting to solve the same problem.

Then we presented our ideas to one another, taking time to critique each idea. This is where our ideas and solutions came together.

The design studio taught us that problems often have multiple solutions. This team-oriented approach allowed us to create a more dynamic product.

Synthesizing a plan

The feature prioritization method allowed our team to streamline our design efforts. Each feature and function was evaluated based on what was vital to the user experience and/or easy to design versus what was less important to the user and/or took longer to build out. This prioritization kept us focused and was key to meeting the tight timeline of the project.

Lo-fi Prototype

Before getting into the visual design of the MoMA app, the lo-fi prototype was tested to validate design decisions and identify opportunities of improvement. Our goal was to test the navigation scheme and overall usability.

Defining our objectives

• The user can quickly navigate to the art galleries page

• User will be able to easily navigate the app by using the bottom navigation bar

• User will be able to navigate back to the main page

Testing the lo-fi prototype revealed that users were interested in viewing the gallery, but when tasked with navigating to the gallery page felt hesitant on which icon to use. The users that made it to the virtual tour felt like they were just “thrown into it” and expressed how they wanted more direction. We were missing the mark in providing an easy to use experience.

Based on the patterns of feedback, we had clear insights into how we could iterate on the experience to better achieve our goals.

Hi-fi prototype

How we incorporated usability test insights

Next Steps