WAM APP - Ching Lam Yeung

Project Vision

Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art (WAM) is an art museum located in Turku, Finland. During the lockdown in early 2021, the museum is open with limited admission, which is not the most convenient of circumstances for visitors. The project is designed for museum visitors to have a satisfying experience even during abnormal situations.

Goals & Challenges

In the redesign project, the main goal is to design an interface for the WAM mobile app, in which the app users can get up-to-date information for the museum opening hours and arrangements, and buy mobile ticket through the app.
These are the challenges to overcome:

1) Incorporate a way for the user to buy and use ticket quickly.

2) Create an interface capable of receiving up-to-date information.

3) Construct a detailed page for each event and exhibition.

Design Process

Double Diamond

User Study

I interviewed five participants for research purposes to help understand the needs of the user when they visit WAM.

Plan the visit in advance

80% of participants stated that they will plan their visit to the museum beforehand, but only 40% of the participants will buy an online ticket in advance, the rest of them will buy the ticket upon arrival.

The tricky part is, during the Covid-19 lockdown the museum does not accept cash payments, and visitors need to reserve a time-slot in advance due to the limited admission. So if visitors buy the ticket upon arrival, they may not be able to admit the museum immediately if the current time-slot is full.

"I didn't even know you could buy the ticket online."
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Up-to-date info

60% of participants did not know that the museum was opened with limited admission during the lockdown. 60% of participants agreed that a mobile app for arranging avisit to the museum will be useful for them.

During the Covid-19 lockdown period, opening hours and admission arrangement for museum may change quickly depending on the pandemic situation. People may miss the opportunity to visit the museum because of lack of information.

"Because of Covid-19, I haven't been thinking of going to the museum."

Meet the Users

I consolidated the research result and created three personas based on what I learned from the research. It helped to create a better understanding to who I am designing for and what would be the most important thing to focus on in the project.

Anna | 37 years old | Photographer

Anna is a photographer who works for local photo studio. She is a single mother who has a five year old daughter. She is quite busy due to work , but she hopes that during weekends she can still have some quality time with her daughter, so she often goes to museum and park with her.

Timo | 19 years old | University student

Timo is a student currently studying history. He is interested in culture and literature, and he often looks for cultural activities to attend in Turku. He lives with a roommate in the student dorms.
His time is scarce due to studying and social activities, so he needs an effective way to plan his visit to museum.

Emma | 28 years old | Freelance Designer

Emma is a freelance designer, she is passionate about art and design.  As a freelance designer, her schedule is quite flexible.  She is a frequent museum visitor and she often go to art exhibition to get  inspiration.

Lo-fi Ideation

Working through a couple of preliminary sketches, I realized some of the ideas and layouts that I was planning to employ do not work as well as I initially thought, for example, the two-sided menu and overlay for the mobile ticket may make the layout too complicated and it may cause confusion for the users. After figuring out these problems, I altered the layout design and created a higher fidelity wireframes.

Preliminary Wireframe

Creating a higher fidelity, but still fairly preliminary, version of wireframes, I was able to obtain a clearer vision towards the layout and the functionality of the app. I decided to integrate the two-sided menus into a bottom navigation bar that included only four main sections: Exhibition, Information, Ticket and Account. This change will allow a more intuitive use of the interface and reduce confusion for users.

Information Architecture

Final Design

Click here to try the prototype

Style Guide

Style Guide for WAM App. In this redesign project, I created an UI for WAM App which is developed based on the original visual elements from Wäinö Aaltonen Museum. (For example the original logo and the use of primary colour are based on the original museum's branding)

Takeaways

WAM App is my very first project in UX design. Through the process doing the redesign project, I understand that product design is not merely designing graphics or nice looking interface. The more important thing is the experience and interaction, which makes research and user study really important in UX design, because it allows you to have better understanding of what the user thinks and wants.

During the design process, I also found that I was a bit hasty when I was in the early stage of the design process (e.g. sketching for the lo-fi wireframe). If I could have spent more time and effort in that stage, I could probably have a more well-planned flow for the design, which will save time for later iterations.