Researcher

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- Conducting general surveys and preliminary interviews of key audience(s), competitive audit, defining the field's / users' major pain points
- Proposing and running usability studies on prototypes, highlighting findings

Programs used: Google Survey, Sheets, Qualtrics, Powerpoint

iOS Developer

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- Reflecting design intent in live prototypes
- Finding and resolving existing / new bugs, ensuring code meets Apple's developer guidelines
- Designing most efficient code for desired app layouts and features

Programs and languages used: Xcode, Swift, SwiftUI / UIKit

Designer

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- Ideating and designing lo & hi-fi prototypes
- Researching current layout / interaction trends on mobile and XR-equipped platforms

Programs used: Figma

3D Developer and Modeler

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- 3D scan and photograph existing exhibit(s), individual sculptures, artwork, and descriptions
- Remodel 3D scan in Rhino and Unity with clean geometry, textures, and proper lighting
- Design gameplay / live animations, high quality textures, and background processes with device capabiltiies to ensure smooth movement
- Design UI elements with standard gestures and graphic similarity to organization's brand

Programs used: Unity & C#, Trnio Plus (3D Scan App), Rhino

Being tasked to design a virtual tour application, I needed to take a step back to empathize with and assess the audience and major use cases.

As such, I designed and performed a series of interviews and surveys. After initial interviews to develop a satisfactory survey, I understood that potential respondents and interviewees were most likely a small population, so I aimed the survey to a larger subset of the population: Art museum lovers. If someone loves art museums, they may also have used a virtual reality application to experience them.

Initial Interviews with Art Museum Lovers

- Used to better craft the best possible questions for art museum VR users
- Learned that these are people who CAN visit art museums- what about those who can't / choose other means of experiencing them?

Survey

- Received hundreds of respondents
- Creating an auto-updated analytics page for users as a "gift" for completing the survey (no funding here!)

Post-Survey Interviews with VR Users

- Used to better craft the best possible questions for art museum VR users
- Learned that these are people who CAN visit art museums- what about those who can't / choose other means of experiencing them?

Foregrounded with a lack of funds for attaining a satisfactory amount of respondents, I was tasked to design the shortest survey as possible with a good marketing strategy.

I redesigned the survey a handful of times- with each iteration removing superfluous information or 'leading' questions. In addition, I modified the survey to have conditional parts- only adding questions when necessary or when a user has used VR. If a user had used VR for virtual tours, I also asked whether they'd be available for a potential interview as they were my key audience!

With a survey that took most test subjects around five minutes, it was perfect to release to a wider audience of respondents.

After only sharing on social media, I learned that having others share the survey, and their friends share the survey, it became a domino effect that rapidly increased the amount of activity and responses on the survey.

Connecting psychology, I wanted to provide a gift for potential respondents to incentivize that their time was being spent well. Thus, I created a spreadsheet of all responses with charts and graphs to show where each users' responses landed amongst others.

After one week, I collectively received 168 respondents- enough to begin data analysis.

Non-VR User Findings (87% of respondents):

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If users were to virtually tour an art museum, the most desired features would be the ability to:

83% Read more on the artist and artwork
72% Click to move around the space
68% Special access to visualize old or closed exhibitions

As such, these would be highlighted features to be included in the application to attract new VR users.

VR User Findings (13% of respondents):

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Primary motivations for using VR to tour art museums were:

Pandemic lockdowns
Far distances
Class assignments and remote instruction
Checking out exhibits before visiting in person

Enjoyable features for users were:

Game-like navigation
Good UI (Clear direction, easy clickable options)
High quality images of artwork
Options for more information and audio

Major pain points consisted of:

Potential dizziness
Lack of quality images of artwork / sculptures
Poor navigation (no option to jump to certain exhibits)
Lack of additional information

Synthesizing this knowledge, it's imperative to define these findings in the user persona profiles.

Example Question: If you were to use a mobile device (laptop, tablet, phone) to virtually tour an art museum, what features would you want it to have? Check as many that apply or add in the 'Other' option.


Want to see more of the survey results? Click here for more.

I held two sets of around 7-8 interview sessions: One initial set of interviews to inform the survey design, and a final set to clarify or provide additional information on the survey responses.

These interviews were crucial for creating the below user groups and personas because they provide direct insights into the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of our respective target audiences.

More specifically, they provided a more nuanced perspective on my interviewees' lives, and how virtual reality, both in use for art museums and other contexts, has improved and frustrated them for varying reasons. For instance, one interviewee, a teacher, clarified that they've tried to bring VR applications to support their curriculum, but some of their disabled students could not handle common VR graphics.

Three general user groups and personas emerged from the interviews: Educators (1), Active students (2), and Art enthusiasts (3).

For the sake of brevity, I've outlined a key persona, Tyler, and Tyler's user journey from the first user group:

Typical Questions for Interviewees

• Tell me a little bit about yourself. What do you do?
• What do you like to do? What’s your background?
• Which art museum were you thinking of when taking the survey?
• What was the primary reason for using virtual reality to see that art museum? Were there any other motivations?
• What was the primary goal for using VR?
• What did you like about it?
• Were there certain features that you particularly enjoyed?
• On the other hand, what were some things you didn’t enjoy?
• Do you remember specific things that bothered you?
• Was there something you wished was there that was not?

How do I create a product that aids in my personas' journeys? Defining the main problems:

Tyler is an enthusiastic K-12 teacher who needs easy access to art museums because it will help connect their students with a more diverse curriculum.

Jasmine is a busy art history student who needs an easy and fast way to access an art museum's inventory and offerings because it will save her time finishing school assignments.

Riley is a working professional and art enthusiast who needs an engaging way to access international art museums because they enjoy viewing exhibits before visiting them, and discussing art pieces on social media.

With Tyler in mind, it is clear a user-friendly platform with easy-to-use navigation and special considerations for accessibility are necessary. In addition, the experience of such product will need to provide similar educational content to the museum, with audio, high quality content, and expert commentary.

With Jasmine in mind, search functionality is essential to allow a succinct journey to find applicable artwork and their respective place in the VR exhibit.

With Riley in mind, social media integration for browsing is key. In addition, the ability to view exhibits in VR before traveling allows them to confirm their desire to visit, producing anticipation and excitement!

How might we combine solutions to these pain points into one product?
It's time to ideate.

With Tyler (and Jasmine and Riley, the personas for the other user groups) at the core of my brainstorming, I speculated, sticky-noted, and design sprinted as to how we might remedy some of the noted pain points or frustrations.

After inspecting my charetted ideas (you just scrolled through a few on the sticky notes!), I recognized that a lot of the potential value propositions fell into four categories:

• Accessibility
• Education
• Entertainment
• Experience

The app must take from these four factors to create a multi-faceted product that embodies solutions to our user groups' problems.

I began materializing the persona user journeys with the app, frame by frame, to get a clear picture that each of the app value propositions adequately appeals to the personas' pain points.

For Tyler, the storyboard depicts them unable to reach the physical museum, so Tyler decides to open the virtual tour app to bring the museum to their class! Through a simple cast via Bluetooth or wire, Tyler connects the app to the smartboard and illustrates the virtual model of the app to their students, thereby diversifying their curriculum and appealing to the complex needs of their classroom.

For Jasmine, the storyboard prefaces with her inability to physically see a specific art piece at the museum. The app bridges the gap and allows her to look up the work, view it with VR, and cite the experience in her paper. The app created access for Jasmine to successfully complete her assignment.

I then performed a competitive audit of eight other competitors.

In order to understand the breadth of scope, I dwelled on a few questions:
What does a "virtual tour app" include?
What are the competitors doing well, and what are they missing?
How can we utilize their gaps to our advantage?

The audit included typical competitor demographic info and analyses of their product offerings, including their target audience and unique value proposition. More in depth analyses included first impressions (desktop and mobile app experience), app interaction (features, accessibility, user flow, and navigation), visual design (brand identity), and their offered content (tone and descriptiveness).

Each of the eight below apps were assessed for:

First Impressions Desktop and Mobile Experience
App Interaction Features, Accessibility, User Flow, and Navigation
Visual Design Brand Identity
Content Tone and Descriptiveness

I learned that most of the competitors did not include an immersive reality feature. The ones who did had limited navigation features and interaction components. For interaction features, some did include excellent gamification to interact with their collections.

Incorporating top-requested functionalities from our user feedback, aligning with user journey needs, and benchmarking against successful competitor features, it's evident that an immersive virtual reality component for museum collections would significantly enhance the user experience and address numerous pain points.

At this stage, it also became essential to consider branding, and ultimately, the choice of a museum. Because of the close proximity and the lack of an app, I chose the Staten Island Museum as the perfect opportunity to provide a research-supported design for an app.

See the initial concept sketch below.

Creating these frames relied on two key ideas:

1. Easy access to search and initialize virtual reality collections.
2. Conform to the look and feel of the Staten Island Museum brand.

Because VR and non-VR design patterns can be very different, it was important to uphold consistency between designing for the VR & standard app frames.

To begin, I created a main IA diagram to dictate the main navigation links. This incorporated the Staten Island Museum's existing navigation hierarchy. Below, I show how the website nav bar directly correlates with the app's overall navigation links.

It also includes the VR feature as the main nav button to minimize the amount of steps needed to fulfill the original user journeys (appealing to all personas). Adjacently, the 'search' initialization button is included as a portion of the primary navigation (appealing to Jasmine, the student).

I've illustrated a few key user journeys below that facilitate a successful user flow, best minimize the user journey, and maintain typical design patterns.

The VR Journey can be initialized immediately from the homepage, which then opens to a exhibition list where the user can read about, choose, and/or share their chosen exhibit. Hoping to reduce friction points, the quickest route to VR is minimized to two taps.

Tyler (my educator persona) can choose an exhibit and visualize it with VR, attain more information on each art piece, for all of their students to experience! The museum was brought to Tyler's classroom- a success!

In designing for the Search Journey, a quick user journey was also prioritized with extra focus on a smooth transition between typical app screens and VR.

Jasmine (my student persona) can seamlessly search a certain art piece, quickly attain and confirm more information, and visualize it in VR. Citation for her paper- success!