App for local galleries

Designing a web-app to promote going to local art galleries

This is the full case study!

2-min summary here.

Skills demonstrated

User Research
Testing
Affinity Mapping
Ideation
Brainstorming
Mockup
Prototyping
Iteration
Persona
Survey

Platform

Mobile

Main Tools

Figma
Google meet
Microsoft Suite
Zoom

Date Range

May 15 2020
to July 10 2020

Intro

A Toronto gallery director wanted more public interest in Toronto’s galleries by making it easier to visit them. We designed Galleryhop.to, a web-app which makes gallery navigating and discovery in the GTA easier.

This project was done as part of a summer practicum project for my Master of Information concentration in UX Design. Our program coordinator put our team in touch with the gallery director.

Research

We looked at existing solutions which did roughly the same thing.

The good:

  • Some solutions were easy to navigate
  • They offered lots of information about galleries
  • No need to download an app

The bad:

  • Not Toronto-specific
  • Only good for current gallergoers
  • Missed many local galleries
  • Inadequate filtering
  • Not enough personalization

We also designed a questionnaire. Many questions would help us ideate later, but here are some stats we thought were important:

We also asked questions which would help us ideate down the line. We also generated a persona  based on research. Meet Gary the gallerygoer!

Ideation

We used data from our research to create a list of problems to address. By asking “How Might We” questions, we ideated on a list of features.

Next, we built our affinity diagram. This lets us organize our many ideas into buckets, which will make sense later.

With this level of organization done, we are now able to make a prioritization matrix. This will greatly help us focus on what's important, and what can wait.

Designs

The webapp only had a few screens, so we started with sketches.

Problem

  • A list of contacts we which we were promised for interviews kept getting delayed.

Solution

  • Move on to mid-fidelity but conduct rigorous testing. Compromise, but make up for it.

Using the ideas we came up with, I created an interactive mid-fi prototype.

Test results from 5 participants

Positives

  • Map and List views are useful
  • Purpose of filters was clear
  • Selecting galleries was easy
  • Architecture of the app made sense

Changes to implement

  • Reconsider having the “Quiz”, a filter wizard
  • Imply page continuity
  • Reconsider the hamburger menu
  • Improve text hierarchy
  • ...and much more!

Simple tasks, such as finding 2 galleries of interest, took less than 15 seconds. Tasks dealing with the quiz, a confusing feature, took over a minute.

I incorporated the feedback and created a high-fi with aesthetics and branding.

Lessons