Creating an Audio Tour App for an Art Museum (In Progress)

As part of my Google UX Progressional Design Certification, I was challenged to make an app based on a randomly generated prompt. The prompt I received was “Design an Audio Tour App for an Art Museum.” So here is how I utilized the principles of user-centered design to create this app.

Empathize: My first step was to conduct interviews with potential users to gauge their needs without allowing my implicit biases to color my thought process. I conducted six interviews with people of various genders and backgrounds ranging in age from 25-68. Based on the data I collected from my interviews, I made the following user profiles:

I then used the profiles to develop User Stories, Problem Statements, and If/Then Statements, guiding me to make the best possible products for these users.

"As a frequent museum patron, I want to customize my audio tour experience so that I can always learn something new." -Theo's User Story

"Theo is an artist who needs to have lots of information about the art museum on hand because he likes to wander through exhibits freely in search of inspiration" -Theo's Problem Statement

"If the app allows users to freely bounce between different parts of the tour than Theo can visit the exhibit in any order he chooses." -Theo's If/Then Statement

---

"As a new museum patron, I want to have a structured, guided tour so that I don’t become overwhelmed." -Dennis's User Story

"Dennis is a new museum patron who needs to experience a guided tour of the art museum because he wants to better appreciate the art." -Dennis's Problem Statement

"If Dennis has an easy time operating the audio tour app then he will experience a satisfying trip to the museum." Dennis's If/Then Statement

From here, I began to think of Dennis as my main user and Theo as my “super” user. So my goal became to design an app that was easy enough for Dennis to use while still allowing Theo the customization he wants. This allowed me to write the following goal statement:

Our audio tour app will let users learn about the art that is most interesting to them which will affect museum patrons hoping to get a more enriching educational experience by allowing tours to be easily customized and experienced by people regardless of physical ability or technological prowess.

Define:

From here, I began to make decisions about the features and user flow my app would include. I started with my goal statement and wrote down any feature that I thought would align with my product’s goal. I also referred back to my interview transcripts to take note of any feature that was suggested by my interviewees.

From here, I developed my first proposed user flow, which would be helpful as I moved on to low fidelity prototyping later.

To round out my first round of defining my problem and proposed solution, I drew some big picture storyboards.

Ideate:

As I begun to ideate, I worked out some ideas that I had about the Information Architecture of my app. The highlighted portion represents my most important user journey, which is the one I chose to focus on for the remainder of the project.

Next, I drew some basic wireframes. I chose to draw them on an iPad because I find that this is the easiest way to share “paper” wireframes with users and stakeholders without sacrificing any of the speed I gain from drawing by hand

I showed these to some peers and made changes based on their feedback. Then, I moved on to Figma to create some low-fidelity prototypes.

Then, I expanded on these to create a low-fidelity prototype.

Test (In Progress): Currently, I am working on a plan to test my low fidelity prototypes with some users so I can implement their feedback into my high fidelity wireframes and prototypes.