UNVEILED
A mobile application created to bring history alive through Augmented Reality.
Unveiled is a platform that offers a delightful and insightful way for individuals to engage with history and culture. Through its interactive augmented reality function, users can delve into the past and breathe new life into items and places of historical significance.
The Objective
Research, plan, and design a mobile app that enhances the museum experience of museum-goers through simple, immersive, memorable, and fun attributes.
The Problem
Museum visitors seek a more engaging and interactive method to learn and connect with the exhibits they view. While they appreciate what they see during their visit, they need a means to remember and revisit their favorite moments. How can we create an experience that will captivate museum-goers as they explore the premises?
My Role
UX/UI Designer in a team of 4 other designers
Tools
Figma
Photoshop
Visual Studio Code
GitHub
Project Duration
4 weeks
Research
With the advancement of the digital world, museums around the globe are incorporating augmented reality (AR) to enhance the visitor's experience through various interactive features. In order to create a seamless and captivating product, we conducted extensive research on other AR applications and identified the pain points of our target audience.
Research Goals
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Find out what different people prioritize when going to a museum
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Identify potential limitations people experience when visiting a museum
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Find missed opportunities for museum-related apps
Market Research
Museums today are utilizing AR apps to attract and engage visitors. As technology advances and people are accustomed to using smart devices, augmented reality has changed how people absorb information. Most museum AR apps on the market share a common goal or interest: to create new experiences by unlocking the past and digitally dropping it into the real world.
User Interviews
The interviews gave us a better understanding of the expectations, needs, and pain points regarding museums and applications. Our findings showed that users wanted experiences that would leave a lasting impact and help them gain perspective. They valued experiences that were stimulating but also enjoyable.
Discovering commonalities
After analyzing user feedback, we created an affinity diagram to categorize the data based on common characteristics among users. This process will be instrumental in guiding our design process and ensuring that we can create practical and valuable features that meet the needs of our users.
Looking around a museum for codes would be so exciting!
I want to remember an experience more than a particular exhibit”
I want to remember an experience more than a particular exhibit
Ideation
We aimed to design a comprehensive app with multiple interactive features in one platform. To achieve this, I brainstormed ideas on how to make the app as engaging as possible while keeping our focus on delivering information in a fun and easily understandable manner for users of all ages.
Feature Analysis
Our team decided to prioritize the candidate features from our user feedbacks based on impact. As a team, we ranked our final solutions through voting.
Main features to focus on are:
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Create an AR experience that is informative and enjoyable
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Gamify the museum journey to make the experience more intriguing
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Incorporate a gallery that will hold bookmarked artworks
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Create an interactive tour guide throughout the museum
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Add a journal for users to write notes besides the saved image
It's essential to consider who our users would be and what kind of visitors visit the museum. I believe visitors around the world visit museums while traveling, so having the option to translate the information into different languages is not only impactful but resourceful.
Develop User Persona
By conducting research and interviews, we better understood our target audience. As a result, we created a user persona named Enna Yardena. Enna is a passionate museum explorer whose interests align with our app's goal of attracting a diverse audience with a general interest in museums. Enna's traits will guide us in developing an app that engages users effectively.
Creating the right user flow
Now that we have the priorities and initiatives aligned, we had to create a user flow that's not only easy to follow, but it had to be fairly simple. By doing so, this will allow us to envision how we want to build out our mobile app.
We wanted to make the onboarding experience as smooth as possible so that users will know what to do when they first arrive at the museum. The user would first have to select the museum they are at and scan the museum QR code in order to successfully be in sync with the AR experience.
Design
Design System
Prototype
After conducting thorough research, gathering user insights, and creating our style guide, we can now bring in all the necessary elements to create our desired theme. We aimed to establish a friendly, playful, and inviting atmosphere, as museums are often perceived as cold and monotonous places.
Onboarding
Our aim was to provide users with a tutorial upon opening the application. This will enable them to have an idea of the features of our app and facilitate their navigation throughout the museum.
Easy Navigation
Keeping the bottom navigation bar to a minimum would simplify the user flow. The first tab for the account page will include the main essentials such as the search bar, featured museums, favorited exhibits, and visited museums.
Interactive Tour Guide
Through user feedback, I have learned that being lost in a crowded museum during peak hours can be a highly frustrating experience. To address this issue, our interactive tour guide can guide users to their desired destination, regardless of their current location.
Journal
With the journal feature, users can easily keep track of their recently viewed and starred items. Additionally, they can write notes to refer back to later.
Gamify the experience
Introducing badges will keep the users engaged throughout the museum experience. As users interact with the application, they'll have the chance of earning a badge. Starting a collection will promote users to continue using the application after visiting the museum by revisiting it in the future.
Bringing Displays to Life
This is the AR feature that will bring ancient artwork to life. The audio feature within the information displayed will allow users to listen on the go. The translator function will allow tourists visiting from around the world to understand what is written. The star was included to give users the option to favorite it so that they'll be able to reflect back on what caught their eye.
Dark mode
Our application features a night mode option as an alternative to the light color scheme. This mode is particularly useful for museum visitors as it helps conserve battery life while reducing eye strain and fatigue. Additionally, it minimizes distractions caused by bright backgrounds, providing a more seamless browsing experience.
Iterate
During my spare time, I took up the challenge of redesigning our original application to make it more user-friendly and engaging. To achieve this, I focused on enhancing key features such as the onboarding process, journaling, interactive tour guide, and AR functionality. By making these improvements, I believe our application will provide a better user experience and add more value to our users.
Onboarding
Journal, Interactive Tour Guide, and AR Functionality
Next steps
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Build out more AR features
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Finish designing the art gallery
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Create virtual spaces where you can experience not only through AR but through VR
Reflection
I had a positive experience working on this project with an excellent team of collaborators. We maintained proactive communication throughout the process, which enabled us to overcome the challenge of completing it within a tight timeframe. In order to make the most of our time, we divided up our tasks and checked in with each other regularly through virtual meetings to provide feedback. Our future plan for the application is to expand our museums worldwide to cater to our global users.