Smart Guide
Role
Research, UI, UX
Size
2
Client
Powerhouse Museum
Bringing a more personalised museum visiting experience based on your interest
Overview
The smart guide is a narrative-based wayfinding App designed for the Powerhouse Museum. The App focused on giving visitors more control and maximising efficiency by providing personalised experiences in the form of ranking personal interest. Augmented Reality(AR) was incorporated to improve wayfinding and engagement in forms of participating in activities
Process
The Design Thinking process was adopted throughout the design
Methods
Empathising
Contextual Observation
Interviews
Generative Workshops
Synthesising
Personas
Affinity Diagramming
Ideation
Storyboards
User Journey Map
Prototyping
Testing
Usability Testing w/ Think Aloud Protocol
Context-mapping
Get the right mindset ready for the workshop
We did a contextual observation at the museum with our participants. Prior to this, a sensitising booklet including the tasks to complete before and after visiting the museum, was given to recruited participants a few days ahead of the generative workshop. The participants were asked to fill out one exercise per day. The purpose of it was to get participants ready for the workshop by reflecting on their own experience. The exercises were designed to help us collect their motivations reflect on related experiences.
Key Focus Area
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How was their visiting experience end up compared to their expectation? Satisfied or unsatisfied? and why that?
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Track their mood changes during the visit (Facial expressions, body language, uttered sounds), and why certain changes?
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Which area/areas do they spend the longest time and why?
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How would they manage their time within the museum?
Sensitising Task - Mood Tracker
"After the visit, I felt so tired, and I think if I go by myself individually, I would have a better experience. The only thing that makes me feel better spending 3 hours here is having fun with my friends "
People left with feeling fatigue at the end
Running out of time
3/4
4 participants made a plan beforehand but 3 of them end up having not enough time to see what they were interested in.
Unsatisfied
5/6
5/6 participants felt excited before they came to visit the museum, but ended with an unsatisfied experience.
Contextual Observation
"It's hard to tell where we are now because the transition between each section is not clear"
Confused by the layout of the museum
Initial Findings
The Workshop
Why left unsatisfied and tired?
The purpose of the workshop is for us to better understand participants needs and frustration based off or initial findings.
The Make & Say tools
"I spent the whole night making collages" - Ethan Bookstein, designer
User experience is all about Emotions and feelings
We made some collages as Make & Say tools, which used in the workshop to elicit emotions and feelings in order to help us delve into their needs and frustration. The insights gathered through doing the exercises contribute to the later ideation process.
Comparing the experiences
"I felt relaxed and chill afterwards"
01. Information needs to be catered
"The place is so big and informative, I lost my focus really quick, and turns out I felt tired"
Visiting the museum is an activity about acquiring knowledge and gaining new information. As a result, a long time processing it all will become mind-numbing. However, this created an opportunity for us to find the best way to present information catered to the topics they are interested in.
02. More interactivity
"I want to focus on the display instead of reading the instructions the whole time”
The very large amount of collections make it really difficult to read the back story behind each display, they need a more engaging and smarter way to help them with absorbing the information.
03. Conformity and social influence
"I came with friends, which is good at social respective but I cannot dive deeper into what I liked"
Going with friends made them cannot dive deeper into what they liked as they some times need to conform to a group consensus even when it goes against their own interest.
04. It is much easier to follow
"I felt relaxed afterwards"
The people that hang around without any purpose or just following their friends during the visit end up feeling relaxed. On the contrary, people who made the plan beforehand put more effort and energy into wayfinding and time management.
Analysis & Insights
Define the opportunities
Take the initiative of wayfinding
People ended up feeling tired because of the inefficient way of wayfinding and having explored and taken in so much. They want to have more control over their navigation rather than passively following maps or wandering aimlessly.
More Engagement between visitors and exhibits
Visitors interacted with most of the exhibits by reading the instructions but turned out to become mind-numbing as acquired too much new information. Our solution should provide more opportunities for further enhancing learning and engagement in a smart way.
Unique experience customised for everyone
As everyone was interested in the different topics and areas, the ideal journey would be unique to each individual by exactly matching up their interests, especially in a group setting.
How might we help visitors have more control over the visiting experience by letting them feel comfortable both physically and mentally?
Final Concept Video
The purpose of the App is to give visitors more control over their way-finding by providing a personalised route in the form of ranking their interest in order to reduce the sense of fatigue
Customised Onboarding
After user opened their App, they can either choose to customise their route based on your Interest or Top-Rated Exhibits selected by Museum
Interest Ranking
Simply drag and drop the items from the section below to the top, the App will generate a personalised route for visitors, in the case of a group of friends, the most efficient route which catered to the needs of everyone will be generalised.
Follow your interest
Follow the personalised route based on users favourite topics to keep the journey focused and engaging.
AR Assistance
Augmented Reality was incorporated to improve wayfinding and engagement in the forms of participating in activities.
Hi-Fi Prototype and Highlights
In the Ideation stage, I was guided by the above 3 areas of focus. The goal was to allow visitors to take the initiative of exploring. We started with storyboarding a couple of concepts and used the Pugh Matrix (a criteria-based decision matrix) to help us compared and arrived at the best optimal concept.
Ideation
Interactive Prototype
Interest Ranking Flow
