Art Gallery Virtual Tour App
This app was designed for people who cannot travel to art galleries due to distance or physical reasons and also as a teaching aid. Being able to bring people together and share art was what I had in mind when designing this.
Project duration: November 2023 - January 2024
Project Overview
The Problem:
Sometimes people cannot go to art galleries in person, so I wanted to be able to bring the experience of an art gallery to them. Also, teachers could use this app as a teaching tool in their classrooms as well.
The Goal:
To create an app that will give the experience of viewing the art in an art gallery, take tours, be able to save their favorite art pieces and artists, learn about each piece and artist, create their own tours, and even purchase items in a shop.
User Research: Summary
Going into this, I wanted to create an app that would make it easier for people who wouldn’t be able to visit an art gallery to view art from wherever they are and to enable teachers to use it as a teaching aid. For this, I made a survey asking the following questions:
What do users enjoy about art galleries?
What information do users want to learn?
After significant feedback, I learned that users would like to be able to view art, share the art they enjoy with others, and buy things from a gift shop.
Users want to know about the artists: their background or life story, the inspiration for the piece.
Pain Points
Users want to know what medium the artist used in making the piece.
Users want to be able to share art with others to feel more connected.
The ability to purchase art or products based on the art.
Persona: Nadia
Problem Statement:
Nadia is a teacher who needs to view art from her classroom because art galleries are too far away.
Personas
Age: 34
Education: Bachelor of Art
Hometown: Newbury, OH
Family: Single
Occupation: Art Teacher
“Art should be loved and appreciated by all!”
Goals:
View art galleries and museums, share with her students, and assign them assignments involving reviewing art pieces.
Frustrations:
Comes from a poor community, no local art galleries, the closest gallery is in the city an hour away.
Nadia is a teacher at a local school. She wants to show her students different forms of art and have them review them, but there are no local art galleries and the closest one is an hour away. She needs a way for her students to visit a local art museum or gallery without having to pay money or travel.
Information Architecture
Paper Wireframes
The goal was to be able to make this app easy to navigate and for the user to be able to find the information they want quickly and easily. In the end, I chose one that users would be able to easily find the most necessary pieces at all times, and announcements on the front page.
The goal for the homepage was to make it easy for users to see announcements like what was new to the gallery, but also access other options easily.
Top bar features a menu button for easy navigation, the image of the gallery, and a profile button.
Home page features gallery information, a link to a featured post, a link to the tours section, and any announcements.
User information
Digital Wireframes
Access to the users’ personal favorites, creations, and orders.
After user research and research done by viewing other apps, on the profile page, users can access their favorites, tours they’ve taken, tours they’ve made, purchases, and even track their orders.
In my User Flow, you can see that the app has many features, including:
Home page
Profile
Favorites
Shop
Tours
Ability to favorite artist and art
Ability to create your own tours
Low-fidelity Prototype
Need a back button
Need separate pages for each item listed
Need explanations for the buttons
Add continue to shopping to cart
Add sharing option to tours users make
Usability Testing Results
The finished mockup has a total of 68 screens and contains pages for announcements, a featured article, artist information, art piece information, tours, examples of tours the users could make, sharing capabilities, a shop, a favorites section, and more.
Mockups
The profile page is supposed to be a place where users can access their favorites, tours they’ve made, and track their orders. After a usability study, it was found that the order tracking and the purchases buttons caused confusion, so I removed the Order tracking button and it can be found in the purchases menu.
I originally thought that just having a plus sign for an add to tour and a heart symbol for favorite would be evident enough for users to know what they do, but after a usability study, I discovered that I needed to label buttons so users knew what to do.
Before usability Study
After Usability Study
Before usability Study
After Usability Study
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
In my User Flow, you can see that the app has many features, including:
Home page
Profile
Favorites
Shop
Tours
Ability to favorite artist and art
Ability to create your own tours
Accessibility Considerations
Alt text was added to each photo and button so that text readers would be able to read them.
Appropriate color contrast was used so that if dark mode is applied, it will still look good and be accessible.
The animation is set at a slow enough limit so as not to cause irritation when using the app.
Takeaways
Impact:
This app will make it possible for people to enjoy the fully gallery experience without having to leave their home and share the experience with others. It can bring family and friends together in new ways and even inspire future artists in art programs.
What I learned:
Throughout this project, I learned the right questions to ask, what users would truly love to be able to see and do in an app like this, and how important accessibility truly is. I also learned that what might be obvious to me might not be entirely obvious to others.
I would add a search featured to be able to search for art or art by an artist to make it easier for users to find a specific piece they may be looking for.
Next Steps
I would add a list of art by the artist on the artist page so that users could see what other art the artist may have in the gallery.
Add the possibility of artists submitting their art to the gallery virtually to be on display so that they could have a wider audience.