MEET YOUR MUSE!
Muse is a personal digital audio guide app I designed for use at art galleries and museums.
Using common design patterns and information architecture structures of modern music streaming services, I created an innovative and recognizable application. At the same time to boost visitor experiences at museums.
Product Design
UX Design
UI Design
Branding
Let me first introduce you to the app, and then I'll tell you how I went about designing it.
Getting started is easy. All users need to know is where they are at or enable location services.
Once your location is set users can open up the map or click Start Exploring to start.
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Visitors looking to quickly begin listening can easily open up the menu here to scan the QR codes next to displays or exhibit entrances. Using the camera on their iPhone will work as well and prompts launching the app.
Some of today's museums are campus-like with multiple multi-story buildings, so I designed the app to be flexible to account for extra buildings and floors to match different locations.
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Beyond just listing building names and floor numbers, the app provides enough detail to also allow visitors to plan a route. Visitors can see what's on a floor or the type of exhibit before you get to them.
Again, since museums are laid out in various ways, this screen corresponds to a specific museum and matches it's nomenclature.
At our current location at the High, a gallery represents a single room.
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Selecting a gallery from this list is like selecting a music album. The next screen contains all the tracks for that room.
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Each track corresponds to a piece of art or display. Pressing the play button starts visitors listening and learning experience.
The breadcrumb/dropdown menu at the top of the screen allows you to quickly change rooms if you need to.
The now playing bar at the bottom means guests can finish listening to their current track while looking for the next track to listen to.
Visitors should be settled into a rhythm now, listening to Muse tell them about each piece of art as they walk from piece to piece.
Swiping the cover art to select the next track as they move along the gallery wall or letting the auto play guide them from piece to piece.
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Tap on the caret, track name, or cover art to learn more.
Save a track to listen to again later or remember a detail about the piece.
Information about each piece includes relevant information right in the app so visitors won't need to open up Google if they want to learn more about what contemporary art is.
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The always available menu allows users to bounce around the app easily. They can find saved items, change their language in settings, access the QR code function, and more.
DESIGN PROCESS
RESEARCH
User Interviews
Secondary Research
Secondary Research
DEFINE
Empathy Map
Wireflow
Wireflow
DESIGN
Wireflow
Moodboard
Sketching
Style Tile
A/B Testing
Moodboard
Sketching
Style Tile
A/B Testing
TEST
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Usability Testing
RESEARCH
My main source of research was primary research in the form of user interviews. I conducted three user interviews among people who enjoy visiting museums at varying frequencies and began defining users with the use of an empathy map.
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DEFINING AND DESIGNING
After drawing conclusions from my research I started working on defining features and flows starting with my wireflow before moving forward with branding, styles, and the UI.
I settled on the name Muse and ran with that theme, drawing further inspiration from the Muses of Greek mythology and artwork from that time period, choosing the Lyre for a logo and "Muse Orange" for my primary color.
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Time to start filling up those wireframes. I went with a neumorphic inspired design with some extra fine lines included around the borders of buttons to make them look a more interactive. I couldn't settle between with or without marbling, so I did some A\B testing and settled on without and finalized my UI styling.
UI STYLE GUIDE
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COLORS AND FONTS
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f0f3fc
Yeseva One - logo type
TESTING
I created a prototype to perform some usability testing on Maze. I tested clicks and moving through the app objectively and then asked testers for their subjective opinions.
Testers had little issue completing most of the tasks. Setting your location caused the most challenge due to there being multiple ways to complete that task.
I want users to be able to explore locations besides where they currently are, so I will need to find another pattern to achieve this functionality.
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Wide or multiple touch-points led to tasks performed on these screens to have very high success rates during testing.
PROJECT TAKEAWAYS
This project was fun and challenging for me due to a couple of firsts.
Namely, this was my first time working on an experiential product and a product that's meant to supplement an experience. Thinking about how audio and even tactile stimulation enhances the highly visual experience of museums was a welcome challenge. Additionally people navigate museums in a myriad of ways so designing the app to be both as fluid and intuitive as possible was a top priority for me. I wanted finding the next informational track to be as easy as it is for a person to shift to the other side of the room.
Additionally, this was my first mobile app. I've designed websites for mobile use, but a mobile only experience brought both new opportunities and challenges to think about.
I look forward to the opportunity to work on more projects like this one!