What are visitors hoping to experience during a museum visit? What challenges disrupt their experience?
To better understand the tools available to visitors, I evaluated existing museum and discovery platforms alongside user research to identify key navigation and discovery challenges.
Looking at what’s out there already...
I conducted 2 out of 8 semi-structured interviews to gain deeper insights into the journey of casual museum visitors.
Both participants noted habits of visiting museums a few times per year and preference for flexible, self-paced exploration.
Cognitive Overload
“The thing with museums is like they’re too overwhelming... they’re too large and like, there's so many topics that they cover”Open Exploration
“I just wander around. I don’t really like to follow a pattern. I like to just wander and see where my curiosity takes me.”Temporal Pressure
“Sometimes I get really stressed when a museum is closing and I can’t figure out how to leave… I panic.”Taking these insights, we mapped them into key themes to uncover patterns in visitor needs, behaviours, and pain points.
We used a series of HMW questions to reframe challenges as opportunities. These helped guide ideation toward solutions that were grounded in actual visitor frustrations.
Bringing together insights from the research,
I broke down the challenges of the visitor journey into 3 key design opportunities.