Sharon Li
Product designer
Kröller Müller Museum
The Kröller Müller Museum has indoor exhibitions and the largest sculpture garden in Europe. Due to the pandemic, it is not possible for overseas tourists to come. The outdoor exhibition experience can be often affected by weather as well. The museum currently does not have a mobile app as a complete guide. For visitors who do not want to carry an audio tour or pay for a guide, they struggle to navigate the outdoor exhibitions. Therefore, there is a need to find solutions that make the experience seamless, accessible, and informative for both on-site and online visitors.
1. Extensive research is required to compare the needs of online visitors and on-site visitors: how they want to interact with the app at home or in the museum.
2. Museum’s existing brand guideline is a is a key constraint that requires me to incorporate their logo and brand colour into the design.
3. Privacy: Design alternative navigation methods for users who are hesitant to share their GPS location data.
The Kröller Müller Museum app enhances the visitor experience both on-site and remotely. It offers virtual tours and media guides for easy navigation, providing unexpected details and surprises for on-site visitors. With the app, visitors can explore the museum's large collections from anywhere in the world.
The mobile app has received positive feedback from users, with a 95% task completion rate and 100% of users agreeing that the app helped increase their interest in visiting the Kröller Müller Museum.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Kröller Müller Museum in any way. I am just one of the visitors who enjoyed the museum so much. I do not claim ownership of any official images used in the mockups.
→ The home screen of the app showcases the museum's three main highlights along with virtual tour selections and the latest events
→ Users can access the virtual tour from both the homepage and museum page
→ The virtual tour includes tours with different durations, themes and it is supplemented with a text transcript
→ Users can locate the artwork's location by referring to the number on the map.
→ Users can create a personalised list of exhibits or tours that they want to visit or revisit later
→ The 'Ticket' function enables remote visitors to plan their museum visit in advance
Before I began designing, I conducted on-site research at the Kröller Müller Museum. It was a great opportunity to spot unmet users’ needs and see how my design could fit into their museum experience. I applied an observational framework and discovered the paper map remains the main tool for navigating the museum. A guidebook with a long list of exhibits makes it challenging to find the information about artwork during the visit.
The Kröller-Müller Museum has a world-renowned collection of mainly 19th and 20th century visual art. It also includes the large collection of work by Vincent van Gogh and one of the largest sculpture gardens in Europe.
I analysed our competitors to understand their strength and weakness. I listed 2 direct competitors of Kröller Müller Museum: Kunstmuseum and Rijksmuseum. I also looked into Smartify as an indirect competitor to analyse how the virtual tour is designing to cater user's need on the app.
I have conducted remote interview sessions with three respondents who had different levels of interest in visiting museums.It allows me to better understand:
1_ What users experience in both museums and virtual tours
2_ Users' needs, wants, motivations, and expectations when visiting virtual tour
3_ How might virtual tour changes the way people visit a museum
→ The museum is too far and the travelling cost is expensive, they also have to consider the weather condition.
→ Most users stayed at home during the pandemic, they tried looking for virtual tours.
→ Users can visit the exhibition anytime, and they can easily share their favourite artworks with others.
→ Users tend to follow suggested routes on virtual tours when they do not have a specific item in mind to search for.
To evaluate the performance of the product, there are a couple of matrix we can measure:
Conversion rate: the% of users who complete a listed action successfully
Satisfaction rate: how satisfied users feel with our product
I ideated on possible product features and prioritised them based on impact-effort matrix, it gives me an idea on what is most impactful to the user and business.
Using insights from my interviews, I created two user personas, Jenny & Eric, which helps to navigate through the expectation, motivation and concern of target users throughout the design process.
Using insights from my interviews, I created two user personas, Jenny & Eric, which helps to navigate through the expectation, motivation and concern of target users throughout the design process.
I created a sitemap based on user and business needs, and backed up by research. The goal is to make a logical and easy route for both online and on-site users to navigate.
After sketching some paper wireframes to represent the layout of the pages, I created low-fidelity wireframes to convey my ideas for interaction design and user workflow.
I recruited two users who had prior experience with museum apps and one user who had never viewed a virtual tour before, to try out the prototype. To ensure a shared understanding, I began the usability test by providing a brief overview of its purpose and the persona. As some of the participants being in lockdown, they had no difficulty grasping the concept of the museum app. By following Steven Krug's usability testing script template, I employed a set of task scenarios to guide users in interacting with the interface and simulating their personal experiences. The following is a list of tasks and the corresponding testing results:
Based on the feedback and insights that I gathered, I made some changes to my prototype.
As User 2 mentioned having trouble finding the tour and booking a ticket, I have rearranged the order of the features on the home screen and paired the icons with text labels on the tab bar. With these modifications, users should be able to know where they can view a tour, book a ticket, or access their e-ticket at first glance.
Finally, I assembled the necessary design components for engineers to build the UI.
As this is a conceptual project, I was unable to quantify the potential impact of the product. However, feedback and ratings from usability testing indicated that users became more interested in visiting the museum and understood the exhibits better.
Since I developed the museum app from scratch, there are opportunities to explore additional features in the next iteration, with a particular focus on improving the tour experience. For example, the implementation of a virtual map that displays the museum's layout, sections, galleries, and highlights. This feature would assist users in understanding the museum's size and enable them to plan their virtual route accordingly.
Next, I should conduct another round of usability studies to confirm if the pain points users encountered have been successfully addressed.
I am very proud of myself for designing an app for my favourite museum in the Netherlands. Here are my reflections on the successes and failures in this project.
Although I have created a prototype with features that address user pain points, there is still room for iterations if I had more time. Deciding which features to prioritise is difficult, but I have learned to use a matrix to make those decisions.
Due to the global pandemic, I had to conduct usability tests remotely. Users sometimes became too focused on the task and forgot to think aloud. If I was able to do it again, I would show users a short video demo of think-aloud session to quickly explain what is expected from them. Nevertheless, I discovered the user testing platform UXtweak when preparing the remote test. I am glad that I could keep track of task statistics and discovered unexpected paths that users took.
©2023 Sharon Li. Made with 💦 and 🍵 in the Hague, NL
©2024 Sharon Li. Made with 💦 and 🍵 in the Hague, NL
