A way to discover art exhibitions and find companions
The problem: There is somewhat of a crisis in the culture sector.
Brief: explore how we can make a stronger digital cultural experience regarding art and/or museums.
My role: one of two designers working on the project. Conducting research, ideating, testing and prototyping. This project was part of Berghs’ digital upgrade program.
Time frame: about five weeks of effective work.
Result: a proposition for an app where users can discover new exhibitions as well as connect with like-minded people and finding someone to share the experience with.
The cultural scene was already experiencing a difficult time before the covid pandemic hit, and right now it is exhibiting an unprecedented strait, with declining visitors, serious competition from digital amusement and economic impediments.
We were tasked with finding out attitudes, driving forces and wants from potential visitors. The methodology used was design thinking and the double diamond approach.
We started with surveys and interviews to gain a good understanding of what could attract potential visitors to a museum or exhibition, i.e. what is most important to them.
We received 152 responses in our two surveys where we asked things like “what would make you choose an exhibition over another activity” and “tell us about your best museum experience”.
We also conducted around 15 interviews to get more qualitative answers and to dig a bit deeper.
We conducted interviews at Koppartälten in Hagaparken and in Rosendals Trädgård.
Among the interesting common tendencies we saw were:
From our surveys and interviews we could extract two segments of users:
The Museum Visitor - interested in experiencing museums and exhibitions, being social, meeting friends, learning things and engaging their kids.
The Digital User - wants to experience new things, interested in and willing to try out new digital solutions. Looks for easily accessed activities, follows the opinions of friends and is drawn to stimulating and educating experiences.
We charted user journeys based on exhibition visits in real life as well as digitally, both before and after the current pandemic situation.
We also outlined effect mapping taking business goals, KPIs, the driving forces for our identified user segments into consideration.
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From our insights we authored four hypotheses of which we chose to concentrate our ideation on the most central one:
We believe our target group has difficulty finding and coordinating activities and their company. To remedy this we want to create a digital platform that helps its users to coordinate their activities and companions.
We conducted two design studios, one for a digital solution for finding relevant exhibitions and one for finding people to accompany a visit.
From here we produced wireframes using Balsamiq which we tested on seven users. The primary purpose of the testing was to validate hypotheses and ideas. The secondary was to test the app concept and information architecture.
We decided to go for a mobile app considering:
“I want this to be available now!”
The quote comes from interviewee Emma, who just relocated to Stockholm from abroad, loves visiting art exhibitions but has a difficult time finding both what is available and someone to accompany her.
She was one of five people we tested our wireframes on, resulting in a lot of inspiration, ideas and insights.
From here we had enough to go on to produce a high-fidelity prototype.
