DePaul Art Museum

UX Research

Prototyping & Wireframing

Usability Testing

TEAM

Chloe Villanueva
April LaRosa
Emily Urbana
Caroline Rumani
Vanessa Nwosu

TIMELINE

Jan - May 2023

TOOLS

Figma
3D Vista
GitHub

BACKGROUND

Collaborate with the DePaul Art Museum to develop new experiences aimed at boosting engagement with their museum.

OVERVIEW

The DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) is a museum showcasing a variety of art forms created by not only DePaul University students but artists from around the world. The museum is open to the public and presents three to five temporary exhibitions per year.

PROBLEM

DPAM faces challenges regarding lack of engagement from the surrounding community.

SOLUTION

Personalized Art Exploration: A Virtual Tour Tailored to Your Personality

DPAM expressed concerns about the lack of engagement with its museum and their desire to expand their online platform. They aim to provide an experience that allows those unable to visit in person to explore DPAM while reflecting its social justice initiatives and inclusive nature.

An interactive experience through a virtual tour that is based on a personality quiz that finds your #DPAMArtMatch. This allows interested visitors to explore DPAM’s exclusively-online collection based on five personality results from the quiz without having to come to the museum in person.

From Challenge to Solution

RESEARCH

Stakeholder Meeting
Competitive Analysis
User Research

DESIGN

User Flow
Lo-Fi Wireframes
User Testing

CONCLUSION

Final Prototype
Reflection

RESEARCH

Meeting with Stakeholders.

At the start of our project, we met with DPAM staff to understand their concerns and needs. They highlighted a lack of community engagement and a desire for a more interactive museum experience.

Based on these insights, we established three key goals to enhance visitor engagement:

Virtual experiences in a museum setting.

DPAM Staff emphasized their desire to use their online space.

Using the existing CatalogIt HUB.

Database of DPAM's online collection they are unable to display physically.

Dismantling classist barriers to art.

The museum advocates for making art appreciation accessible to everyone.

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

Competitors are transforming their online experiences, using interactivity to make art more accessible and engaging for all.

To create a more engaging and accessible online museum experience, we analyzed competitor museum exhibits and art databases. We identified three common patterns they used to enhance interactivity and accessibility, which informed our design approach:

Virtual tours of the physical museum: Most museums offer virtual tours, allowing users to explore exhibits remotely and bridge the gap between digital and in-person experiences.

Enhanced content and interactivity: Competitors enriched user engagement by attaching supplementary details, multimedia, and interactive elements to artworks and exhibits.

Personalized Recommendations: Many platforms featured interactive experiences that suggested artworks based on user preferences, fostering deeper engagement and discovery.

01. The Children's Museum Houston’s Interactive Exhibit

03. Google Art & Culture’s Personalized Art Discovery Based on Color

02. Louvre’s Virtual Tour

USER INTERVIEWS

Understanding the Users

“I’m interested in checking the museum out but I don’t have anyone to go with and I don’t want to go alone. It would be nice if I could access the museum online.”

“I’m passionate about social activism. As a student at DePaul, I’m interested in learning about how the museum shows activism through art.”

“I live a block away from the museum but have never been because viewing art seems a little boring. If they made it more engaging, then yeah I’d be more inclined to go.”

Brainstorm

Before conducting interviews, we identified DPAM’s target users—those most likely to engage with the museum.

Goal

To gain deeper insights of the target users needs, expectations, and motivations when it comes to the museum.

Findings

DPAM visitors seek enriching art experiences that connect them to DePaul University and the Lincoln Park community.

PERSONA

We created three key personas: art enthusiasts, prospective students, and accessibility-conscious visitors.

We summarized our findings from the 1-on-1 interviews into personas that represent DPAM’s target audience, helping us better understand who we’re designing for and their needs.

SYNTHESIS

Turning Insights into Concepts

How can we utilize DPAM's virtual space to incorporate their online collection while breaking down the traditional barriers of art appreciation?

A virtual tour allows users to explore DPAM's digital art collection, providing the ability to click on each piece to learn more about it.

How can we add more interactivity to DPAM's virtual space?

A swipe-based quiz that uses OCEAN theory to match users to one of five personality types based on their preferences.

USER FLOW

An intuitive, accessible experience that captivates from the first interaction.

Users enter through DePaul’s domain, guided by a call-to-action into an interactive personality quiz. As they swipe through artwork, they discover their match—or skip ahead to explore freely. The journey culminates in a personalized 3D gallery, designed for both discovery and engagement.

In crafting this user flow, we prioritized accessibility without compromising engagement—ensuring a seamless, interactive experience that invites all users to explore art in a way that feels intuitive, immersive, and personal.

USER TESTING

Changes made to our wireframes based on user feedback.

We conducted usability testing based on three tasks: completing the personality quiz, skipping the quiz to jump straight into the tour, beginning the virtual tour straight after the personality quiz.

01. Improved call-to-action.

Before

Initially, the overlaid button on the quiz confused users about how to start and what the quiz was about.

After

To reduce confusion, we moved the 'Enter Quiz' button below the art piece, removing the overlay design to highlight the artwork and reinforce that the quiz is an art-related activity

02. Clarifying the swipe-to-like design

Before

Although users had no learnability issues when swiping to like or dislike an art piece, they initially didn’t realize the personality quiz used this functionality and needed clarification upon entry.

After

To clarify the personality quiz functionality, we made the like and dislike buttons more distinct to reinforce the swipe interaction. Additionally, we added a help pop-up providing an introduction to the quiz, offering users a fallback for clarification if needed.

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Get matched with art that interests you.

A curated personality quiz lets users swipe on artwork to reveal their type—historian, chameleon, traditionalist, thrill seeker, or sensitive—and view matching pieces from the DePaul Art Museum.

Go to the museum without physically being there.

Explore the DePaul Art Museum virtually, where each room reflects a unique personality match. With intuitive navigation, users experience a seamless, accessible museum stroll—breaking barriers to art appreciation.

Learn about the Museum and its database of exclusively online artwork.

Users can engage with each artwork in the virtual tour, unlocking deeper insights and enriching their appreciation of art through an interactive and immersive experience.

REFLECTION

As the last class of my undergrad career, I'm proud of this project and have learned a lot from this experience. Although I am proud of the project's outcome, I believe there's still room for improvement.
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What I've learned...
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• Setting weekly goals or giving each other (my team in this case) a timeline of deadlines to meet in order to stay more organized.
• Making sure to seek as much help as possible was beneficial. It helped to gather a variety of fresh opinions and critiques to improve our project.
• Communicate as much as possible with the clients in order to make sure we're reaching all of their needs.
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What I'll do differently in the future...
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• In my future projects, I'd like to focus more on the initial research before designing.
• Doing more rounds of user testing and to a bigger sample of user testers, to gain a variety insights of the project.
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At the end of this two-quarter-long class, each group created presentations to showcase our projects to the DPAM staff and also present them in DePaul's College of Computing and Digital Media tech showcase, where each major of this college displayed their final projects created in their senior capstone class. However, this feature is not yet officially implemented on DPAM's website, as it takes months to a year to get approvals from the university and DePaul's developers.

Pictures from our final presentation showcase!