How to preserve Cultural Heritage
Planning the Museum Revolution
PROJECT TEAM: A quick introduction to the group
Our team was made up of young-minded and enthusiastic UX/UI students who are characterized for contributing a high level of implication and motivation. Farah, Hajrah, Lotte, and myself.
THE BRIEF
Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present, and bestowed for the benefit of future generations. … The best way to preserve your cultural heritage, whatever it may be, is to share it with others.
Museums struggle to preserve and activate cultural heritage. Our museums are no longer on the top; It plays an important role to define the landmark within the heritage area as well as generating an economic return and supporting the tourism industry.
GOALS
Given this, we found it necessary to think about the design principle and the process.
“How Might We help museums bring people closer and fulfil their mission to preserve and activate cultural heritage in the 21st century?”
Our project intended to address this wicked problem. Taking into consideration the design thinking process and developing an idea to come up with a solution.
PROJECT PROCESS: The key stages of the team’s approach.
- Research
- Lean Survey Canvas
- User Survey
- User Interviews
- Affinity Diagram
- Dotmocracy
- Empathy Map
- User Persona
- Mind Mapping
- Brainstorming
- Concept sketching
- Concept testing
EMPATHISE
Research & Lean Survey Canvas
We started by researching and collecting our thoughts in our Lean Survey Canvas which gave us a clear understanding of the goals and objectives for the survey.
Survey
It could be said that we received a good feedback volume (171 responses) to our survey, which helps to present more accurate results. See the questions below:
- How likely is it that you would visit a museum?
- Where are you most likely to visit a museum?
- How much would you spend on a museum ticket?
- What kind of museums do you like?
- Usually, what are your reasons for not visiting a museum?
- Where do you look for information related to museums / cultural events?
- What is your motivation for going to a museum?
- Who would you choose to visit a museum/exhibition with?
Results:
Some of the relevant findings from the survey are shown as follows:
- Most respondents said that are likely to visit a museum (70+%).
- Covid (52%), Time (29%), and Price (22%) are the main reasons for NOT going to a museum.
- Looking for information on events websites (55%) and chatting with friends (49%) are the most common information sources.
- The main motivation in going to a museum is self-development (66%).
- Friends are the most preferred company (68%).
- Most people would not spend more than 20€ on a museum ticket (73%).
Interviews
To get the entire picture about users' general behaviours, we conducted interviews with 5 volunteers asking them questions about their thought process behind different stages related to cultural visits.
See some comments below:
Reasons to go:
“ I like sharing moments with my friends, going to museums is a unique way. ”
“ I like museums that are more interactive.”
Reasons not to go:
“ If there’s a queue I would not go. ”
“ As you know, we are in Covid..”
“ It is usually hard to find a good quality museum of my Interest.”
“The last exhibition seemed cooler on Instagram.”
DEFINE
Affinity Diagram
At this point of the project, we had implemented this tool to collect all the information received from the survey and interviews to identify trends and relationships in data.
Based on the information gathered, it can be concluded that we have positive and negative feedback, such as Covid measures, crowds, and queues, on the negative side. And the opportunity to socialize, learning, or finding interactive museums on the bright side.
Empathy Map
To summarise, as results, these were the main gains and pains we identified from users:
Gains: Learning new things, finding their inspiration, self-development feelings, having a good time with a friend, enjoy an exhibition, or just pure intellectual leisure.
Pains: When not everybody is interested in the topic, finding annoying crowded spaces or queues, overpriced tickets, Covid restrictions, and overrated functions.
Primary User Persona
Now we have spotted our user persona, she is Jane Dot, art advocate, 28 years old. She enjoys her time out with friends, but she loves spicing up their meet-ups with a cultural perspective. The more visits she does allow her to grow personally and achieve professionally. And of course, make her social networks shine.
User Journey Map
Here we have a visual interpretation of the overall story when our user, Jane, interacts within the ecosystem identifying possible touchpoints with our future product. And it shows her emotional state in each step to recognize aspects in the journey that could be opportunities to help the user achieve their goals.
Problem statement
“Culture lovers need a way to find cultural heritage resources in a more accessible way because the troublesome process of finding a favorable option makes them lose their interest and decline cultural visits.”
IDEATE
With the previous design thinking method, we concluded with some opportunities:
- Virtual Options
- Limit Crowds/Queue
- Search on interest
- Search on location
- Discounts
- Share interest
- Interact
Brainstorming & Mindmapping
Is one of the most established techniques for generating ideas. This was about generating as many new ideas as possible in a team. Quality is achieved through quantity.
Then we started thinking over certain questions to eliminate the pains of our user as follows:
- How might we find a way to socialize in a museum?
- How might we reduce crowds and queues in the museum to make visits safer especially in this Covid situation?
- How might we make required information more accessible for visitors?
See our Mindmap above, used to explore the relationships between ideas. It also helped us to identify and organize proposals and approaches represented visually and effectively.
Concept sketching
Then we moved on with drafting concept sketches for our product. We decided to time 15 minutes to recreate up to 5 screens of our app that will try to represent the features mentioned above, fulfilling the objectives of the original project.
We voted again to select the appearance and features that our product should have and we went on to recreate the sketch with which we would conduct concept testing interviews with 5 users to check the viability of our app. All of them liked the concept and found it useful, providing important feedback to move forward.
Concept testing
Appreciations
- Search filters
- Virtual touring
- All required info (Covid, reviews, interest, location)
- Connecting with Community
- Share with friends
Suggestions
- Specify the type of tickets (adult, kid)
- ‘Others’ option on Community Page
- Filters on What’s New Page
NEXT STEPS
To continue with the project, we had planned to create mid-fidelity prototypes that would allow us to carry out usability tests. And of course, refine the features of our app assessing the results obtained.
CONCLUSION & KEY LEARNINGS
This being our first project, taught us some fundamental lessons. Try not to solve too many problems at the same time as this makes everything more complicated, putting more constraints on the table, and information overload as a result. But certainly, we could find real success with an optimized platform, an all-in-one app, where users can find everything easily.
We had to not follow our assumptions, but tools such as Lean Survey Canvas and Affinity Diagram helped us to structure the information, defining the problem clearly helping us to focus on one specific solution. Moreover, we had to avoid distractions such as interesting but irrelevant details as the discussion could easily become sidetracked.
But either way, as we all now, the design system never ends, and there is always room for improvement.
