Guggenheim Art History App
The Brief:
This is my first completed project for my Google Professional Certificate in UX! To kick off the first assessment, a prompt generator suggested I create an Art History App (I wanted a challenge!)
The Target Audience:
To make this more tangible for me, I picked the Guggenheim New York Art Gallery as the app owner. This app would be aimed at its visitors, who are interested in learning about art history. Guggenheim could then use the app to promote offline in-person gallery visits.
My Role:
UX Researcher and Designer
Key Challenges/Constraints:
I needed to ensure that anything produced was consistent with current Guggenheim branding guidelines.
Research Study Details
User research:
The first step here would have been to create an in-person interview list from Guggenheim’s gallery email list. As I didn’t have access to this, I set about creating personas and documenting the user journey steps to highlight potential user pain points. I also carried out a competitive audit to gather insights into how I could best approach the design concept to stand out.
The research highlighted that my app needed to make art history movements clear, easy to understand and lead with visuals rather than lots of text.
Initial Design Concepts
Paper Wireframes:
I sketched five alternatives for the homepage layout and chose the best elements for the final design (Can you tell I’m a leftie from my leaning tower of Pisa-style boxes?! 😂). As a key research finding indicated users didn’t want to have a text-heavy app, I focused on the homepage leading with a scrollable image bar. This allows the user to hop through the eras in chronological order (or if they are a little rebellious scroll back through time!).
Branding:
Parallel to sketching wireframes, I created a mood board for the Guggenheim New York, as the app would have to feel like it belonged to the brand and I needed to familiarize myself with their design system. This step helped inform my decision for the final logo and colour palette choice.
Low-Fi Prototype
Digital Wireframes:
Moving from paper sketches to Figma, I created digital wireframes.
Low-Fi Prototype:
Next, I connected the screens to create a low-fi prototype for usability testing.
User testing results
Unmoderated Usability Study:
The low-fi prototype was tested remotely by 5 users in an unmoderated study. Feedback included a suggestion to add a search option on the homepage for users who didn’t want to scroll through the timeline. They also recommended creating a better navigation menu so users would not get stuck on certain pages.
High-fi Design
Final Design:
Moving from a low-fi prototype in Figma, I created a sticker sheet containing all the brand considerations needed for the app. I then began to add colour, font and imagery.
Accessibility is a key factor for the Guggenheim brand, so in line with their website, I added a translation tool to the landing page and audio descriptions wherever possible.
Conclusion:
If this app were to be commissioned, then in addition to tracking visitor data, the conversion rate of the sign-up button to the Guggenheim newsletter would be a key performance indicator for success.
