Design Sprint
Reimagining the Museum Experience Through Guided Art Discovery
A mobile companion that gives museum visitors context on demand — without pulling them out of the moment.
The Problem
Despite the emotional and cultural value museums provide, many visitors struggle to form lasting connections with the artwork they encounter. Traditional exhibit experiences often rely heavily on long-form descriptions and passive observation, making it difficult for users to engage deeply or retain information after leaving.
Through early research, I discovered that visitors wanted experiences that felt more personal, interactive, and socially engaging without distracting from the artwork itself.
This revealed an opportunity to design a mobile experience that could enhance exploration, emotional connection, and shared discovery within museum environments.
Key Insights
I was given interview recordings from my mentor, and he challenged me to see what I could do with them. After careful analysis of those recordings, I synthesized the information into three main insights.
Viewers feel like they don’t have context and missed something
Viewers prefer to be independent, but would like to know more.
Viewers are overwhelmed by too much information
“I enjoy looking at art, but sometimes I feel like I’m missing out on the full experience by not knowing any background information or context.”
Based on the provided research findings, it became clear that visitors wanted experiences that felt more personal, interactive, and socially engaging — without distracting from the artwork itself.
Using the research findings as a foundation, I focused on mapping the museum visitor journey in order to identify moments where digital interaction could enhance the gallery experience.
Opportunity Areas
Analyzing the visitor journey revealed three areas where digital interaction could add value without competing with the artwork itself:
Explore without overload
Context on demand
Make it personal
Crazy 8's
Using insights from research and competitive analysis, I ran a Crazy 8s sketching exercise to rapidly explore interaction patterns. Rapid sketching let me quickly stress-test which ideas actually supported the museum experience, and which ones just added noise.
Selected Direction
After evaluating the initial concepts, I decided to combine several ideas into a more cohesive experience centered around:
AR-assisted artwork exploration
Contextual storytelling
Interactive gallery navigation
Lightweight educational content
The final direction focused on enhancing curiosity and emotional engagement while preserving the independence and calmness users valued during museum visits.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding helped define how users would move through the GalleryPal experience within a real museum environment.
I sketched my initial ideas of using a camera to scan art, a questionnaire for user art interests, a map for navigation, and popular attractions & specific art descriptions.
As the storyboard evolved, several unnecessary features were removed in order to create a more focused and intentional user experience.
Testing & Iteration
I conducted four moderated usability tests on the low-fidelity prototype. Going in, I assumed the camera feature would be the biggest point of friction — but the results surprised me.
100% of testers found the navigation confusing enough to disrupt their ability to move through the app. This told me the core interaction model needed to be rethought before anything else.
75% wanted a short summary up front, with the option to explore deeper content.
75% said the camera and AR feature was the most valuable part of the experience.
The Three Iterations
Based on that feedback, I made three rounds of changes to improve clarity and usability:
Clarified navigation:
Dock icons now fill solid and pick up a label when active, replacing icons that testers consistently found ambiguous.
Reordered Information Hierarchy:
Artwork pages now lead with subject matter and context, with deeper art-historical detail available underneath — directly responding to testers who wanted context first.
Refined the AR Interface:
Added a clear title to the camera screen and scaled down on-screen labels that were previously large enough to cover the artwork.
Looking Ahead
The next thing I'd want to do is run a second round of usability testing on the redesigned navigation and information hierarchy, specifically to confirm those changes solved the problems they were meant to solve.
Thanks for reading through the GalleryPal process!