Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
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National Museum of Natural History
Student Project- Conceptual App Design
Project Summary
Role: UX Researcher
Problem: Museum visitors of the National Museum of Natural History need a way to improve their experience because the museum’s exhibits are overwhelming and passive.
Impact: Due to this, any patrons are missing valuable exhibits while the few interactive exhibits the museum does have are being swamped.
Solution: By creating an app that facilitates navigation and interaction, the museum’s visitors' experiences will be improved. Through intensive contextual research, interviews, and surveys, we were able to narrow down the specific pain points, and pleasure points for the patrons, and develop an app that engages the mind and aids the patron in their urge for discovery.
For a full clickable prototype please click here
READ ON FOR FURTHER DETAILS
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis: I began researching our competitors, and their accompanying apps. We specifically focused on the American Museum of Natural History in NYC, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC, and the Natural History Museum in London, England.
Discovery: We found different strengths of each museum. London’s museum focused mainly on navigation and promoting
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visiting exhibits. Raleigh’s app was impressive with its wide range of features, including a to-do list, self-guided tours, and an area to save photos, however visually their app was lacking. NYC’s museum app was highly interactive, allowing visitors to become a bear avatar, however, there was no clear use of navigational features.
User Survey
Survey: We sent out an initial survey, to get a ground idea of what our user’s opinions and habits were in relation to their museum experiences.
Discovery: We discovered most people were spending only a couple of hours at the museum, and not necessarily making a day of the trip. This leads us to conclude that many are walking through rather than really studying or interacting with the exhibits.
User Interviews
User Interviews: I conducted two rounds of interviews. The first round was to observe how people are navigating through the museum. The second was to interview and observe patrons as they were interacting or not interacting with an exhibit. I wanted to discover what drew them to that particular exhibit, and why they passed on others?
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Discovery: Patrons originally looking at the map to get their bearings, but after that initial look, they rarely looked at their maps for guidance. Through my hours spent observing the patrons of the museum, I did not see once a single person using a map. This finding was of particular interest. We found that one of the reasons people go to a museum is to discover! To get lost and find something they’ve never seen before. Whatever we did had to aid in the discovery process.
Quote: "Unless the exhibit catches my eye, I just walk on by. I'm sick of all these stuffed animals."
User Personas & Journeys
User Personas: After collecting and synthesizing all this data I created three personas and user journeys that represented our patrons based on the contextual content and interviews I conducted.
 Frankie |  Adriana the Teenager |  Samuel persona |
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 journey-through-museum-prior-to-app-11 |
Sketches
Sketching: We began sketching with a design studio. From there, it was a matter of understanding the architecture and how each of the pages interconnects. With the Museum offering a large number of exhibits, it was essential for us to figure out how to group exhibits based on interest and location.
Discovery: We discovered a way to incorporate AR into the app so that patrons can have interactive experiences with all the exhibits they encounter.
Developing Design
Design: The first screen is the homepage. Once the patron selects “interactives”, the user can see the list of interactive exhibits at the museum. Once the patron selects the Hope Diamond the patron is taken to the Hope Diamond exhibit page which contains basic info about the diamond. From there the patron can select “Find on Map” to see its location, and then select “Start Route” to see the quickest route to get there. The patron then can view the route from a traditional overview perspective or from a ground-level, augmented reality perspective, which displays arrows on the floor. Once the patron arrives at the exhibit, the patron is directed towards the scannable QR code to initiate the exhibit’s activity, which for the Hope Diamond is a game about where diamonds come from. Diamonds originate in the earth’s upper mantle, 100 feet below the surface, and are pushed up by rising magma. If the diamond moves too quickly, it could be destroyed. If it moves too slowly, it could become graphite. In the game, the user controls the speed of the magma and his/her goal to get the diamond to the surface safely.
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Usability Testing
Usability Test: After gathering feedback and performing usability testing, we began testing to see if users could:
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Locate, navigate to, and interact with the Hope Diamond (an exhibit at the museum)
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Find the best way to go through the museum with young children
The first task was meant to test whether users could locate and navigate to the exhibit using the map display we created. It also tested whether having users scan a QR code to activate an exhibit-related activity was an intuitive way to facilitate interactive experiences.
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Discovery: We found that there were too many breaks in the flow. In our iterations, we made sure to include screens that would help the user seamlessly flow from one action to the next.
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Click here to view final product.