Tourify App Development
A detailed case study of our augmented reality mobile app design for the Edmonds Historical Museum.
Background
Design Challenge & Responsibilities
Challenge
Design a technological solution for the Edmonds Historical Museum that enhances innovation and engages a broader audience through interactive and modern experiences.
Timeline
September 2023 - December 2023
Disciplines
User Experience Design
Product Design
User Experience Research
Background
Our Vision
Our vision was to create a mobile app that utilized augmented reality (AR) to provide an immersive and interactive experience for museum-goers at the Edmonds Historical Museum. We aimed to not only enhance the visitor experience by offering engaging AR-guided tours but also to ensure the app was inclusive and accessible to all. By incorporating features designed to assist individuals with disabilities, such as visual or auditory impairments, we sought to make the museum more navigable and enjoyable for everyone.
Background
The Process
Research
Initial Problem Discovery
Stakeholder Analysis
Affinity Diagram
Museum Observations
10 + 10 Sketches
Mobile App Solution
User Interviews
The Edmonds Historical Museum assigned our team the task of creating an innovative solution to make their exhibits more engaging and appealing to visitors from all backgrounds. They recognized that their traditional exhibit setup, while historically valuable, lacked the interactive and modern elements needed to capture the interest of today’s diverse audience. Our research highlighted that visitors, especially younger ones, were looking for more immersive and engaging ways to explore the museum. With this challenge in mind, we sought to leverage technology, particularly augmented reality, to create a dynamic and interactive experience that would enhance the museum’s appeal and broaden its reach.
To gain a deeper understanding of how different museums engage and guide their visitors, our team conducted 30-minute observations at various local museums. We focused on observing how visitors interacted with exhibits, navigated the space, and engaged with any technological or interactive elements in place. These observations provided valuable insights into what makes museum experiences compelling and helped inform our approach to designing an innovative solution
Interviewee Responses:
Opportunity
Modernizing the Edmonds Historical Museum by implementing technology that enhances visitor engagement and attracts a wider, more diverse audience.
Team
Evan Hoang
RJ Mao
Ethan Dith
Ideation
Wireframes
Low-Fidelity
Mid-Fidelity
High-Fidelity
Major Improvements
Information Architecture
Final Designs
UI for Launch
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Slack
Reflections
Post Designs
Research
Initial Problem Discovery
Research
Comparative Museum Observations
30-Minute Observation at the Burke Museum
Conducted by Evan Hoang
Many visitors were actively engaging with the interactive displays, particularly the touchable fossils and digital screens. Some spent a few minutes reading through the content or interacting with the displays.
The larger exhibits seemed to draw the most attention, with people stopping longer to take in the scale and detail of these pieces.
There was a noticeable lack of clear signage, as some visitors seemed uncertain about where to go next. I saw a few individuals backtrack or ask others for directions.
Families with young children were more engaged with the hands-on activities, spending more time at these exhibits. Adults without children tended to gravitate more toward the displays with detailed text, reading more than interacting.
I observed several visitors using their phones during their visit, either to take pictures, look up additional information, or navigate. Some appeared distracted by their phones while moving between exhibits.
Groups moved at different paces, with some lingering in front of exhibits, while others moved quickly between displays without engaging deeply.
30-Minute Observation at the Seattle Art Museum
Conducted by RJ Mao
A lot of visitors spent time standing in front of the larger artworks, especially those with more detailed plaques. Some spent a few minutes reading the context provided while others quickly glanced and moved on.
I noticed the flow of traffic was generally smooth, with most visitors following the natural pathways set by the exhibit layouts. Signage seemed to help guide people, but there were moments when people paused to figure out their next direction.
Interactive elements were not as present, and most people I observed were simply looking at the art or reading. There wasn’t much engagement beyond that.
Many visitors were using their phones, primarily to take pictures of the artwork. Some were also using their phones to search for more information on specific pieces or artists, which they did while standing in front of the artwork.
Younger visitors and groups seemed to move quickly through the space, stopping at key artworks that were more visually striking or widely known. Older visitors took their time, focusing more on reading and contemplating each piece.
There were occasional instances where visitors appeared disengaged, simply walking through the space without stopping or interacting with the exhibits.
30-Minute Observation at the Museum of Pop Culture
Conducted by Ethan Dith
Many visitors gravitated toward the interactive exhibits, particularly those that involved music or sound. I observed several people putting on headphones to listen to audio or playing with hands-on instruments.
The science fiction and movie exhibits, especially those with props from well-known films, attracted a lot of attention. Visitors were often seen taking pictures of these items.
Some visitors moved quickly between exhibits, but those that featured immersive, multi-sensory experiences (like sound and video) held people’s attention for much longer.
I noticed a lot of people using their phones, not only to take pictures but also to record videos of the more interactive displays. Some visitors appeared to be sharing their experiences on social media while still in the museum.
Families with younger children stayed the longest in the interactive areas, where kids were able to play or engage with the hands-on activities, while adults spent more time reading the descriptions or watching videos.
Some visitors appeared disoriented at times, looking around for signs or maps to help them navigate, particularly in the larger exhibit spaces.
In our research, we conducted user interviews with a diverse selection of people to gather a wide range of insights about their museum experiences. We used a mix of qualitative, quantitative, and open-ended questions to capture both measurable data and deeper, personal reflections. This approach allowed us to explore how different visitors interact with museums, their preferences for various types of exhibits, and what factors influence their engagement.
Interview Questions:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how engaging do you typically find museums?
What types of museum features do you find most engaging?
How often do you use your phone during a museum visit?
What would improve your experience at a museum?
If a museum offered a mobile app to enhance your visit, how likely would you be to use it?
Based on the user responses in our interviews, here are the key pain points that we identified:
Synthesis
Pain Points
User Persona
To better understand the needs, motivations, and frustrations of our target users, we developed a detailed persona to guide our design process. This persona, Alex, represents a professional individual with a busy schedule, balancing multiple events and meetings throughout the day. By focusing on Alex's specific goals and pain points, we were able to tailor our app’s features to provide practical solutions that streamline the outfit planning process while ensuring style and appropriateness for various occasions.
After completing the wireframes, we transitioned to developing the low-fidelity prototype to visualize the overall flow and functionality of the app. During this stage, I continued developing my individual component of the project: creating the A/R description screen. As part of this process, we brainstormed three key user requirements to set the scope for our project, ensuring that the prototype aligned with the core needs of museum visitors. These requirements helped guide the design and functionality of the app, making sure we addressed the most critical user needs early on in the development.
User Requirements
1) Interactive Exhibit Information
Visitors want the mobile app to provide them with interactive and detailed information about the museum's exhibits using augmented reality. This includes the ability to point their smartphone or tablet at an exhibit and have the app display historical facts, audio guides, and 3D models, enhancing their museum experience.
2) Personalized Tours
Users desire the app to offer personalized tour recommendations based on their interests, time constraints, and preferences. The app should allow visitors to input their preferences such as art styles, historical periods, or specific artists, and then generate a customized tour route that guides them through the museum. The app should be helping them find exhibits that are relevant to their interests.
3) User-Friendly Navigation
Visitors expect the app to offer seamless navigation within the museum. This includes real-time indoor positioning, clear directions to the next point of interest, and the ability to switch between different tours or languages. Users want an intuitive interface that doesn't distract from their museum experience.
Ideation
Information Architecture
During the ideation phase, we carefully crafted the Information Architecture (IA) to ensure the app delivers an intuitive and user-friendly experience. By brainstorming different ways users might interact with key features—such as wardrobe management, AI outfit recommendations, and event-based planning—we explored various structures to optimize efficiency. The goal was to create a logical flow that aligns with how users naturally think about and organize their outfits. This process of ideation allowed us to experiment with different layouts and navigation systems to ultimately select a structure that best meets the needs of our users while simplifying their journey through the app.
Ideation
High-Fidelity Prototype
The high-fidelity prototype reflected the final version of the app, complete with polished visuals, smooth functionality, and the cohesive integration of features like artifact scanning and augmented reality. In this phase, we added new features like a scavenger hunt to further engage visitors, as well as user profile and onboarding screens to create a smoother, more personalized experience. This prototype was the result of our iterative process and the insights we gained from our final round of user testing, ensuring that the app met the needs of museum visitors while providing an immersive and engaging experience.
Throughout our user testing and iteration process, we identified key areas for improvement in both functionality and aesthetics. We made several key improvements and design decisions based on user feedback and testing. These changes helped enhance the overall user experience and ensured the app met the needs of museum visitors. Below are the three major changes we implemented:
1. Changing the QR Scanning Feature to A/R Scanning
Originally, our app used a QR scanning feature to provide information about artifacts. However, after user testing, we realized that this approach made the A/R portion of the app feel redundant and disjointed. To create a more seamless experience, we replaced the QR scanning feature with an A/R scan. This change allowed users to engage more deeply with the artifacts by scanning them directly, offering the ability to explore individual parts of an artifact in detail rather than just receiving general information. As part of this change, we also removed the option to view previously scanned artifacts, since it was no longer necessary with the more immersive A/R experience. This helped simplify the user interface and kept the focus on real-time interaction with the museum exhibits.
2. Gamification through the Scavenger Hunt
To make the museum experience more immersive and engaging, we introduced a scavenger hunt feature. This gamified element gave users a fun incentive to explore more areas of the museum. It also made the map feature more dynamic, encouraging visitors to interact with different exhibits as they completed challenges and found clues. The scavenger hunt enhanced both engagement and the educational value of the app, making the overall experience more interactive.
3. Adding a Home/Navigation Bar
To improve ease of use and help users move effortlessly between different features, we added a home/navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. This allowed visitors to seamlessly switch between features such as the A/R scanner, scavenger hunt, and map. By making navigation simple and intuitive, we ensured that users could focus on exploring the museum without struggling to find or use app functions.
My Key Takeaways
1) A/R Technology Offers New Levels of Engagement
Incorporating A/R into the app gave visitors a more immersive and interactive way to engage with exhibits. By shifting from QR scanning to A/R scanning, we allowed users to explore artifacts in a more detailed and engaging way, which added depth to their museum experience.
2) Seamless Navigation is Key to a Positive Experience
The inclusion of a home/navigation bar at the bottom of the screen was crucial in making the app user-friendly. It allowed visitors to move easily between features, ensuring that they could quickly access information or tools without frustration, enhancing overall usability.
1) Simplicity Improves Engagement
Simplifying the app's interface, such as by removing unnecessary features like viewing previously scanned artifacts and QR scanning, helped make the user journey more intuitive. This led to better engagement with the app’s core functionalities and allowed visitors to focus on the museum experience itself.
4) Gamification Increases Interaction
The addition of a scavenger hunt provided a clear example of how gamification can boost user interaction and encourage exploration. This feature not only made the app more engaging but also incentivized visitors to explore more areas of the museum, enhancing their overall experience.
Research
User Interviews
Research
User Pain Points
Synthesis
User Persona
Ideation
Low-fidelity Prototypes
Ideation
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
As we progressed in our design process, we moved on to developing the mid-fidelity prototypes, where we began refining the visual elements and interactions. This stage marked the creation of our style guide, where we selected a blue and white color scheme to ensure a clean and modern look for the app. During this phase, our team came together to integrate our individual design components into a cohesive system. RJ and I collaborated to ensure that our two features—the A/R home screen and the artifact description screen—would interact smoothly and look cohesive. At the same time, Ethan completed the design of the navigation screen, rounding out the core functionality of the app.
Along with these design refinements, we made a significant change to the functionality of the app. Initially, our prototype featured a QR scanning system for accessing artifact information, but based on feedback from user testing, we switched to a more seamless approach—allowing users to scan the artifact itself using augmented reality. This change improved the user experience, making the app more intuitive and immersive.
Style Guide
Ideation
Major Improvements & Design Decisions
Final Designs
UI for Launch
Reflections
Post Designs Outcome
A/R Screen - Evan Hoang & RJ Mao
Navigation Screen - Ethan Dith
Building on the foundation of the information architecture, we moved forward with creating the wireframes to visually represent the layout and structure of the A/R mobile app. The information architecture helped us determine how the app’s content would be organized, guiding the design of key screens and interactions. I began by sketching the initial wireframes in my notebook, which allowed for quick iterations. These sketches were then refined into polished digital wireframes using Figma.
We named the app Tourify, reflecting its purpose of enhancing tours through interactive and informative features, making museum visits more engaging and immersive for all visitors.
To ensure our A/R mobile app met the needs of museum visitors and provided an engaging experience, we identified three key areas to focus on:
1) Artifact Information and Context
Visitors want to get in-depth information about the museum exhibit artifacts through augmented reality. When they point their devices at an artifact, they should receive a details like historical background, artist info, and related content like videos or audio descriptions.
2) Immersive AR Experience
People expect the augmented reality to provide an immersive viewing experience. They want to be able to see the artifacts in 3D, explore them from different angles, and maybe even interact with them virtually. This immersive experience should make them feel like they're really engaging with the exhibits.
3) User-Friendly and Accessible Interface
Visitors need the augmented reality interface to be user-friendly. It should be simple to navigate, offer clear instructions on how to use the AR features, and work well with different devices. It should be accessible to everyone, regardless of their familiarity with AR tech.
Sketches
Digital Wireframes
Ideation
Wireframes
As part of our design process, we conducted a stakeholder analysis to align our project with the needs of those involved in the museum experience. We divided the stakeholders into two categories: Direct and Indirect. Direct stakeholders, such as museum staff and management, had a more immediate role in the museum’s operations, while Indirect stakeholders included visitors and community members who interact with the museum in various ways. For each group, we identified their key values, goals, and pain points to ensure our design addressed their specific needs and added value to their experience.
Key Value Tensions:
The first key value tension arises between museum visitors and the board of directors. Visitors are looking for an engaging and educational experience, while the board, alongside museum curators, is focused on ensuring the accuracy of content and preserving historical integrity. Another potential tension exists between sponsors and the Edmonds Community. While sponsors may prioritize maximizing their return on investment, the community places a higher value on cultural enrichment, emphasizing the importance of representing diverse cultures. This can create friction, as focusing on the most predominant culture may be more profitable but doesn't align with the community’s desire for inclusivity.
Research
Stakeholder Analysis
Research
Affinity Diagram
To better organize and interpret the insights gathered from our research and stakeholder interviews, we developed an affinity diagram. In our affinity diagram, we focused on key themes like inclusivity, engagement, and accessibility. We chose categories such as Telling Stories to Appeal to All Audiences and Creating New Experiences to emphasize the importance of representing diverse cultural narratives and making the museum experience more interactive and engaging. The categories Transformative and New Technology highlight how the museum can evolve by incorporating technology, like A/R, to appeal to both younger, tech-savvy visitors and older individuals who might be less familiar with tech. These categories helped us organize our insights and create a clear direction for our design
Research
Ideating Innovating Solutions: 10 + 10 Sketches
As part of our design process, we used the 10 + 10 sketches method to explore a wide range of innovative ideas for the museum. This technique involved creating 10 quick sketches to brainstorm different concepts, followed by 10 more refined sketches that built on those initial ideas. I completed these sketches in my notebook, which allowed for a more flexible and creative approach. The method encouraged us to think beyond obvious solutions and explore how the museum could implement new ideas and technologies to enhance the visitor experience.
Initial Sketches
Refined Sketches
Research
Deciding on the Mobile App Solution
After exploring various innovative ideas for enhancing the museum experience, we determined that creating a mobile app would be the most effective way to meet the needs of both the museum and its visitors. This decision was driven by the increasing integration of technology in cultural spaces and our goal to create a more interactive and accessible experience. The app would enable users to engage with museum content through features like A/R and interactive navigation, helping to broaden the museum’s appeal. In this section, I’ll also be sharing the first presentation we presented to our stakeholders, outlining how we proposed this solution and gained their feedback.
