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IDEATE

Problem: Access and in-person visits to the museum can feel overwhelming because of the vast collection held within an old architecture layout.

How Might We: personalise access to the museum collections in a seamless and memorable manner that inspire each visitor to reuse the app in the future.

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Translating needs into features

From the touch points and needs gleamed from the empathizing phase, I created a Product Feature Roadmap to outline specific app features and organize upcoming design efforts. Prioritization was determined based on the alignment of a feature’s value proposition with the project’s goals and user’s needs. Due to project limitations, I had to focus on features that would be required in an MVP product according to the primary persona.

Research & Findings

According to VisitEngland, London’s major museums and galleries, including the British Museum, the Natural History Museum, and the Tate Modern, attract millions of visitors each year. The V&A Museum in South Kensington, London is estimated to see over 3 million tourists annually.

With high numbers of visitors increasing, I wanted to learn about current competitor resources and understand user pain points while visiting museums in London.

The 5 most valuable features I found from the competition which I take inspiration from are;

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2

3

4

5

Additionally, I decided to collect a series of one-star reviews about the British Museum Audio Guide app to help me steering away from pain points addresses by users in a similar context:

Competitive Audit

What are existing museums audio guides?

• The British Museum app, An app with the similar goals of the V&A app

• Smartify,

• Bloomberg Connects,

• IziTravel,

• Google Arts & Culture,

• MET app

• Traditional Audio Guides

• App-based Audio Guides

• Multilingual Audio Guides

• Alternative guides: Printed Guides and Brochures, Mobile Apps, Interactive Digital Guides, Virtual Tours, Teacher-Led Tours, Online Resources, Accessible Guides, Educational Resources, Interactive Exhibits, Volunteer and Peer Guides.

Learning from our competitors

Staying user centered

Goal: Identify frustrations when planning trips or while visiting museums.

Finding: Most visitors expressed their frustration in the lack of signals, the most asked questions to members of staff being in regard to directions to toilets, lifts, special displays and cafes.

Action: show screenshots

Goal: Identify visits features that would be most valuable for first-time and casual museum visitors.

Finding: Most visitors expressed feelings of being overwhelmed by the size of the building and the collections on display especially when their available time to visit was limited.

Action: show screenshots I created time-focused highlights tour that would allow the visitor to follow a path based on their available time.

Goal: Analyze current resources offered by competitor apps.

Finding: the direct competitor is The British Museum Audio Guide App, followed closely by the National Gallery Guide, Bloomberg app for Tate Modern and several other art galleries and cultural institutions around London.

Action: show screenshots I specifically gathered online reviews about these apps to make their weaknesses the V&A app’s strengths.

Goal: Validate the need for an all-inclusive museum guide and explore app.

Finding:

Action: show screenshots

ACCESSIBILITY

The museum offers several access resources. In terms of audio description and guides, visitors can access audio description of historic locations in V&A South Kensington, such as the Grand Entrance, Cast Courts and Café.

The audio guide is limited for Europe 1600–1815 galleries. Including 5 audio description of objects you can touch.

From the research I have gathered that the ability to select a language would help many visitors to the museum - I have therefore included on the homepage a drop-down menu to select the preferred language at the start. Unlike some competitors, I have added a small flag next to the language title to make it instantly clear to users from the start.

For audio guide planning purposes, providing content in the top 6-8 languages would cover approximately 85-90% of foreign visitors' native languages.

“accessibility” mode setting to view only the basic app functions

SCREENSHOT

Recruiting participants who use the assistive technologies I want to involve in the study such as: 

Screen readers, Closed captions and speech-to-text - ATs that convert audio into text for people with limited hearing. 

Any other assistive technologies that will provide insights about your UX design

The WCAG documents informed how to make the content more accessible to people with disabilities.

When choosing colors, I referenced the WebAIM contrast and color requirements to ensure designs meet accessibility standards.

The results?

AI integrations:

Accessing dominant culture:

• How are the people using your product different from you? 

• How can you help people from non-dominant cultures feel more included in your product design? 

• Are there any challenges that people from certain groups or backgrounds might face as they experience your product?

• If you feel a certain way about the product you’re designing, what’s the opposite of that feeling? Chances are, one of your users has that opposite perspective.

Consider underrepresented culture:

• People with disabilities

• People with limited access to technology 

• People who speak different languages

The Value Proposition

What does the product do?

The app should act as a ‘leading hand’ to explore the vast museum collection as a personalised learning and entertaining experience.

We believe that a simplified museum audio guide for new and returning visitors will allow them to experience a memorable visit.

Why should the user care?

Emphasize and describe how the product addresses users’ pain points in unique ways that aren’t offered by other products.

Step 1. Describe your product’s features and benefits.

Create a list of all the great features and benefits of your product, big and small. Don’t hold back; list everything that comes to mind and then narrow it down later.

Step 2. Explain the value of the product.

Anything that you identify as a value proposition needs to be beneficial to your users.

The categories of product values that were identified during user interviews: accessible, professional experience of the dog walkers, cost, and reliability.

Step 3. Connect these features and benefits with the needs of your users.

The goal is to identify what’s truly valuable to the user and not just a cool feature that users didn’t ask for. To determine value, take the personas you’ve developed and pair each persona with a value proposition that meets their biggest pain point.

Design

With a better understanding of the users and priority app features, I began designing how those features would be realized. V&A Audio guide app would focus on three main capabilities:

1 Exploring the museum highlights

2 Identifying lesser-known artworks of specific interest to users

3 Learning and sharing knowledge about arts & culture through a digital museum guide

Sketching users flows & understanding audio technology

As I sketch crazy 8s for 5 pages, I find myself going back and forth checking previously information gathered on Personas and IA mostly.

To establish user flow and content layout, I sketched out wireframes for screens that users would need in order to complete the three main tasks. One of the biggest considerations was designing how the tour flow would work, as I wanted to offer multiple methods of exploring the collection.

This part of the process required doing a bit of research into photo and audio technology to understand the basic limitations of what the app would be able to achieve. For example, I later built in a selection and zoom step in the photo ID flow, based on methods to increase accuracy in AI photo recognition software.

Based on the user insight that technology detracts from the meditative museum experience, the play/pause feature must be easily accessed with one hand and without much effort.

I decided that a central button on the bottom navigation would serve as a point of access for all artworks once the user needs it.

The proximity to the user’s thumb would allow them to easily access the play/pause feature even if users were looking elsewhere.

To keep the UI as minimal as possible and create a smoother flow, the audio guide icons for Play and Rewind/Forward have been favorited over the ones with a circle. As per the similarity principle of Gestalt, the circle would have interfered with the circles indicating the position of the artwork on the map.

TRANSFORMATION

Testing and Iterating on High Fidelity Designs: 12/03/2025

The app design included navigational and technical features such as searching in a list, and adding a given artwork to favourites list. I conducted a round of five usability testing in person on a high-fidelity prototype to identify core issues in these features.

Turning observations from our research into actionable insights.

Affinity Diagram (organise data)

Insight identification template

Based on the theme that: (theme from previous analysis), an insight is: (insight derived from theme).

Pattern identification template

1. It was observed that 2 out of 5 participants require information about accessible routes. This means that accessibility needs to be re-evaluated within the app orientation features

2. It was observed that 2 out of 5 participants require up-to-date information about galleries closures, events, state of facilities. This means that accessibility needs to be re-evaluated within the app orientation features.

3. It was observed that 3 out of 5 participants smoother user experience flow. This means that the prototype needs urgent revision.

   Prioritize research insights from the most urgent to the least urgent

   Priority 0

   Based on the theme that: visitors require information about accessible routes, an insight is: Accessible routes need to be highlighted within the app’s features.

   Priority 1

   Based on the theme that: visitors require information about accessible routes, an insight is: Accessible routes need to be highlighted within the app’s features.

   Priority 2

Prioritize insights template

Review research findings

Opinion of the app, including whether the user:

• Likes the app overall

• Likes the delivery system

Experience with completing prompts, including whether the user:

• Knows how to get started with a highlights tour

• Has trouble finding a gallery

• Finds all the desired information to start exploring

• Has trouble selecting artworks and adding to favourites in the app

• Has trouble completing a play within the app

• Has trouble entering artworks information

Attitude about the app and completing prompts, including whether the user:

• Speaks in a positive tone

• Speaks in an indifferent tone

• Speaks in a frustrated tone

• Speaks in an annoyed or impatient tone

• Speaks in a confident tone

Usability study was preferred Moderated over Unmoderated due to the nature of the app itself, and the answers we want to find:

• Is the app easy to use?

• Are the users able to complete three main tasks as prompted?

• Uncover users expectations.

• How long does it take for the user to complete the task?

• Are there parts of the user flow where users get stuck?

Synthesize research findings with affinity mapping - Affinity maps make excellent additions to design presentations and portfolios because they: 

• Show your ability to generate actionable insights from usability research

• Help you justify your design decisions with evidence about users’ experiences

Identify themes in the data

you can organize your themes by adding them to the pattern identification template.

Expand themes into insights

you can further organize your insights by adding them to the insight identification template,

Compile prioritized insights

you can use the prioritized insights template to help move your insights to actionable design tasks.

Add to the case study

After the designer synthesizes their research and identifies actionable insights, it’s time to add information about the second usability study conducted to their portfolio case study slide deck

Reflection

I don’t want an app that users use only once, I wish for it to be simple to engage with.

How does the app excites users?

Make your own tour, sharing options, quizzes, new museum podcast channel with special content such as Curators interviews > volunteer expressed interest in using the app after the museum visit only if the content is unique to the app and cannot be found online.

Does it increase sales?

Based on the user’s tour and learning preferences, they can receive shopping, courses and events reminders and suggestions.

Partner with traveling companies based in London to provide a bespoke cultural experience.