As part of the Google UX Design Course, I was challenged with a prompt to create a mobile application for a museum. As one of my earlier forays into Figma, I was eager to apply what I’ve learned in the course into an actual project. In order to start, I began to research on the local museums in my area.
I eventually stumbled upon the National Museum of the Philippines. This is the governing body for all of the public museums in the Philippines, and since it had no mobile app that I was aware of, I decided that this would be a good exercise in designing a project from scratch.
I began my research by analyzing the original website and identified what types of information would be needed the most in a mobile app. I also visited the museum itself to gather more accurate information on the target audience. I also took into account the info panels attached to each exhibit, and what could improve the museum experience in general.
From this, I created two user personas in order to have a better frame of reference on what a museum visitor would want in a mobile app. One of my user personas reflects the amount of students that I saw in my trips, while the other persona reflects the families and other visitors.
The next step in creating my design was the user flow. From my research and observations, I have decided to integrate the following features into my application:
From my previous research and discussions with peers, the user flow would ideally be as short as possible in accessing the above features. With this in mind, I made sure that they could be accessible in 2-3 screens, and are immediately accessible from the home screen.
After gathering enough data, I then proceeded to create some initial wireframes. After some iteration and discussion with my peers, I eventually turned out with these final wireframes that I would convert into prototypes.
After more refinements and acquiring the needed assets, I created the final, high quality version of my prototype. I created a sample user flow for Exhibit VI: Tropical Lowland Evergreen Rainforest, accessible under the museum of natural history.
As my first time going through the design process, I encountered many obstacles along the way. These can be turned into points for improvement in my next projects.
While I was successful in designing my wireframes and prototypes, some of my respondents shared that the final design did not quite share the look and feel of the original national museum website. I believe that I took too much inspiration from other more high-end museum apps, and failed to take into account my main stakeholder. I will take this into account when creating my future projects.
Another issue that I encountered was my confusion on which features I would integrate into the user flow, and what features to leave to further iterations. This led to some unfinished design choices such as the book tours and the buy tickets button being nonfunctional. I will tighten my scope more in my next projects in order to prevent unnecessary work and messy designs.
I have also thought of more improvements to the app after I finished the prototype. These can eventually be refined and added to the app should I revisit an idea similar to this again.
While there is an offer tours button in my app to mimic the original website, my actual app has omitted this due to time constraints. If implemented, users would be able to choose a date and time to book the tour, along with listing the number of people and any special accommodations. This can be worked into a full fledged feature if any future research indicates that a large enough volume of people book tours.
In a similar vein, the national museums also house important artifacts and documents, and any student or researcher is able to submit a request to study them. This feature in the mobile app would make it easier to track any requests, and lower the need for more informal communications or agreements.