Prior to the Smithsonian, museums acted as a display of exotic finds collected by the upper class. So when James Smithson bequeathed his land to the American government for an institution with a focus on knowledge, there was naturally a heated debate. After 10 years of discourse, Congress finally accepted Smithson's bequest. Over 170 years later, Smithson's legacy now totals 19 different museums, otherwise known as the Smithsonian Institution. In recent history, from 2018 to 2019, the organization experienced a sudden drop in visitors: from 28.5 million to 22.1 million.

The goal of this project was to revive visitor interest of the different Smithsonian museums. Despite the Smithsonian owning a number of mobile apps, most are outdated and possess low reviews on the App Store. Therefore in this project it was important to convey Smithsonian's existing branding while instilling relevancy.

The high level objectives were to design a mobile app complimenting the existing Smithsonian user experience focusing solely on one of the Smithsonian museums.

I worked as the end-to-end UX designer and researcher for this speculative project for two weeks in January 2021. In addition, I collaborated with a 3D designer to gain a better understanding of augmented reality (AR) technology.

My research uncovered that users seek out what interests them in museums rather than relying on predetermined routes. Instead of correcting this behavior, I sought out to enhance this experience with the main features and screens I designed below.

I started this project by completing secondary research so I could uncover existing information about museums and the Smithsonian specifically. The methods I used were market research and a competitor analysis.

I conducted market research in order to gain a broad knowledge of museums. I first looked into the past of such institutions so I would better understand the historical impact of the Smithsonian. Then I delved deeper through reading news articles online and sought out opportunities or threats that Smithsonian may want to consider moving forward. Below are a few key findings that I uncovered.

After gaining a high-level understanding of museums, I compared the Smithsonian's competition to learn from their user experiences. For each organization, I navigated through its app and made notes along the way. I looked at both direct and indirect competitors; quickly realizing that mobile apps within this sector are few and far between.

However, for those that developed an app, each possessed unique solutions. For instance: the Kennedy Center gamifies a visitor tour for children, whereas the Phillips Collection hoards a treasure trove of content that would likely be appreciated by adults. I concluded that mobile apps are a digital product museums are still in the process of exploring; with the potential to be a differentiator.

Once secondary research was completed, I moved onto primary research so that I could discover new information about the Smithsonian visitor. I completed this by conducting a series of user interviews.

Acknowledging that provisional personas can only get us so far in design, I sought individuals with experience visiting the Smithsonian specifically. I ended up interviewing five participants. Through hearing each one speak, I was truly able to generate empathy for the user.

With interviews finished, it was time understand the new information I discovered. However, before digging too deeply, I transcribed each user interview so that any details obtained would remain raw and unedited.

With the help of my transcripts, I created an empathy map using statements that were spoken by participants. Direct quotes were written down on post-its and organized. Each participant was represented by a different color to enhance readability and help in visualizing majorities later.

Within the categories of the empathy map, I identified emerging patterns of participants' behaviors, pains, and gains in relation to the Smithsonian. This allowed me to further synthesize the information I collected during the user interviews and gain additional empathy for the user, with the most prevalent patterns grouped into insights. For each insight, I wrote an adjacent user need so that I could later address it in my designs. These insights and needs are listed below along with direct quotes that I felt best encapsulated both.

To summarize all synthesized information from the empathy map and its resulting insights, I created a persona named James. For the remainder of the process, James acted as a continuous reference point of the targeted Smithsonian user. All information of the persona was directly derived from my research to ensure accuracy and eliminate bias.

Based on the insights that emerged earlier as I created my empathy map, a series of "How might we...?" questions were established. These inquiries later acted as prompts for my individual brainstorming:

In order to come up with ideas of how I might address the needs of James, I chewed on the "How might we...?" questions from earlier. For each question, I listed as many potential answers I could based on what design patterns already exist on other apps, as well as anything that simply came to mind. Once I completed the mind map, I prioritized all ideas according to the goals of the project and the needs of James. This helped me gauge which ones made the most sense to pursue and later design.

After generating different ideas, I consider how a user might navigate the Smithsonian app and designed a series of screens. Throughout I remained inspired by the design patterns of Spotify and Apple Maps due to their popularity in hopes to decrease cognitive load.

I started by sketching low-fidelity wireframes on a whiteboard. As I went along, I made sure to label each sketch to avoid any potential confusion of what was precisely drawn. This helped me quickly communicate the user experience I was striving for without spending hours on Adobe XD.

After sketching wireframes on a whiteboard, I recreated them in Adobe XD. As I went along, I refined some of the elements, such as spacing and overall layout. Despite this, I still kept it relatively basic because during usability testing, I wanted users to focus more on the experience itself and less on the interface design.

The mid-fidelity wireframes were then configured into a prototype on Adobe XD. This finally gave me the ability to test the assumptions I made about the app's overall navigability, as well as the screens and actions associated with different tasks.

Using the complete mobile prototype, I carried out remote usability testing on Zoom with five participants. Throughout, each participant engaged in a think-aloud exercise and recorded with expressed permission. This allowed me to receive real-time feedback on the mobile prototype and gain additional empathy for users through hearing opinions. Just like my user interviews, I transcribed each test so that all details would remain raw and unedited.

Using the transcripts from usability testing, I pulled salient quotes from each participant on wrote them on post-it notes to form an affinity map. Like the empathy map, each participant was represented with a different color in order to increase readability and help in visualizing majorities later. I synthesized what participants said by separating post-its into the different tasks they completed and designated a section for remarks about the overall experience. From there, I was able to distinguish patterns of pain points and successes.

Each pain point that was discovered through the affinity map was evaluated by how much time it would take to fix against how many participants mentioned it during testing. This helped me determine not only what needed to be fixed prior to designing a high-fidelity prototype, but which fixes are more important than others. These fixes became known as my design revisions, with an explanation of how I conquered one below.

During usability testing, 80% of users desired to explore more within the home screen through engaging with its content. Previously, the home screen only listed a limited amount of museum exhibitions due to my assumption that that would be enough for a MVP. When revising the designs, not only did I increase the amount of listings, but I also designed a screen that provides additional information.

• Since this project was completed during the COVID-19 pandemic, usability testing was done remotely and forced participants to mentally visualize given scenarios. For instance, during testing I asked them to find the information desk using the app despite staying at home. For some users, this caused an occasional hiccup before re-immersing back into their imagination.

• Augmented reality is still a developing field and therefore was difficult to conceptualize. While I ended up designing more traditional wireframes within Adobe XD, I also experimented with Draft XR, Adobe Aero, and even consulted a 3D designer to better replicate the AR user experience in usability testing. However, neither technology allowed me to integrate the flat aspects of my designs.

• Complete another round of usability testing to ensure previous user pain points were successfully addressed.
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• Understand whether Smithsonian users can navigate to and find value in the newly added screens in adjacent to the home screen.
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• Expand design to include other museums within the Smithsonian Institution.