How to preserve cultural heritage
A case study about connecting museums
Museums struggle to preserve and activate cultural heritage. Our museums are no longer on the top; the culture lovers are not growing and visiting. Why? And what is to be done? How might we help museums and other public institutions bring people closer and fulfil their mission.
“How Might We help museums bring people closer and full fill their mission to preserve and activate cultural heritage in the 21st century?”
In the Ironhack UX/UI design bootcamp, our project was to tackle this problem. Taken into account the design thinking process and develop an idea to come with a solution. Our team consist of Farah, Gabriel and Hajrah. We all have some affinity to culture and wanted to put our brains together to tackle the decline in museum visits and look for new ways to built relationships with culture.
Empathize
For the first part of the exercise we collected our thoughts in our Lean Survey canvas which gave us a clear understanding of the goals and objectives in the survey.
Survey and Interviews
To get a better understanding of our users we started our research with a survey and some interviews.
Survey
Luckily we received quite some feedback on our survey. We ended up with 171 respondents completing the survey. The main things we wanted to find out through the survey where:
- What kind of museum they like
- Where they most likely would visit a museum
- Where to find information
- Who to visit a museum with
- And last what not to like about a museum
Results:
Some of the relevant answers from the survey show:
- 70+% is likely to visit a museum
- Covid (52%) and Time(29%) are the main reasons NOT to go to a museum
- Looking for information on events websites and chatting with friends
- 65% go to a museum for self-development
- Friends are the most preferred company 68%
- Most people will spend less then 10 euro on a museum (37.4%)
Interviews
During the interviews we learned to gather more insights in the actual thoughts behind some of the behaviours. The goal was to understand the reasons why. From these interviews we gathered a lot of frustrations in relation to culture and museum which we could actually work with.
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.”
“ Last exhibition seemed cooler on instagram.”
Define
Since we had a better understanding of our users, it was time to define and interpret the data. We started by creating an Affinity diagram based off the surveys and interviews. We started to analyse all the data with means to cluster topics in a way it make sense. With combining all findings we were able to see trends and relations in our data.
With the help of the empathy map we collected the thoughts and point of view from our user. This collection shows the experience with a museum and covered some of the reasons to visit a museum, but also some frustrations and points to improve.
User Persona & User Journey
User Persona
Meet Jane Dot, our Art Advocate. Based on our affinity diagram we created the persona Jane; Jane is an Art Advocate who lives in Paris. She loves going to museums or events in her free time with friends. She has a lot of books about art and history. She likes to post her visits on Instagram. She always looks for new and interesting exhibitions.
Gains:
- Learning new things
- Inspired
- Quality time with friends
- Self-development
- Intellectual entertainment
- Great exhibition
Pains:
- Not enjoying the content
- Too crowded
- Ticket price
- Queue
- Covid restrictions
- Not interesting
- Overrated
The user journey she follows would look like the journey below.
Problem statement:
After analysing the data and collecting everything in our affinity diagram, the user persona and the user journey. The research shows the main insights of our project.
- Most users like to go with peers or friends to go visit to a museum. How might we find a way to socialize in a museum?
- Most visitors don’t like to go to a museum and spend time in a queue or with restrictions in place. How might we create a way for visitors to not have to stand in line or have a safe space?
- Most visitors like to interact and find something of interest when visiting a museum. How might we make a museum more interactive with their visitors?
The problem was clear to us:
“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
From the User Journey we found some key opportunities to work on:
- Virtual Options
- Limit Crowds/Queue
- Search on interest
- Search on location
- Discounts
- Share interest
- Interact
With the problem in mind we needed to find a solution to tackle this. With our team we all come up with different ideas in 15 minutes. From all the solutions we picked the best features by dot-voting and combined these in our concept sketch.
We picked a prototype where the user is able to see more details on museums and select on them, virtual content, prebook and information on what’s new. And last but not least, there would be the option to interact with others if you opt for the membership.
Here is how our Prototype looked like:
What we found out
After showing our concept to 5 users we came to find out what people appreciated from the concept, and what kind of suggestions they had.
Appreciations
- Search filters
- Virtual touring
- All required info (covid, reviews, interest, location)
- Connecting with community
- Share with friends
Suggestions
- Specify type of tickets (adult, kid)
- ‘Others’ option on Community Page
- Filters on What’s New Page
Next steps
Our team was very happy with the idea and how it came to light. We would like to incorporate the suggestions from the concept test. Introduce filters on the what’s new page and make other options in the ticketing and community page. Next step would be to make a Mid-Fi prototype and test it to see if the features work as intended.
Conclusion
Thank you, you have made it to the last part of this case study of our first project. We learned a lot of new things! The project started not knowing what to do, and ended eventually in something more tangible. Understanding the process bits by bits, and on to the next one!
Key learnings:
- Interviews give more insights in the Why and key roadblocks surface quicker.
- Tools as Lean Survey canvas, Affinity Diagram helped to structure the information
- Work in a sync way and respect the timings
- Avoid distractions, such as interesting but irrelevant details
- Not following our own assumptions
