DePaul Art Museum — Caroline Rumani

DePaul Art Museum (DPAM)

My Roles and Responsibilities

Primary UX Researcher, UX Designer

Team

April LaRosa, Chloe Villanueva, Emily Urbina, Vanessa Nwosu

Project Type

Web App | Mobile Web App | 3D Tour | VR

The DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), located in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, is a world-class museum open to the public and presents three to five temporary exhibitions per year with a permanent collection of more than 4,000 objects with strengths in international modern and contemporary art.

We wanted to encapsulate the social justice initiatives and inclusive nature of DPAM for folks who may not be able to make it in person, as well as showcase the expansive permanent collection through featured art pieces.

With a personality quiz to find your #DPAMArtMatch, newcomers or experts to the art world alike can explore the permanent collection in a easy-to-digest format. Based on each of the five personality results, a personalized 3D tour leads users through an exhibition of the exclusively-online permanent collection.

Problem Space

DPAM currently struggles with showcasing its over 4,000-object permanent collection with a rich and diverse history, as well as connecting with the local community. Our primary goal in this project is to craft a holistic experience for DPAM to grow and enhance its current artwork as well as tap into the local community, breaking down the barriers of classism and elitism in art appreciation for all to enjoy.

Initial Conversations with Staff

During the first few weeks of our project, my team and I met with DPAM staff to understand where their current needs, strengths, and areas of opportunity existed. With the Design Justice Principles as our lens, we focused on investigating potential experiences to help DPAM staff in their goals to increase engagement and prioritize their social justice initiatives within the Chicago community.

We conducted research pertaining to virtual experiences, since our team identified an opportunity with the large and expansive permanent art collection in its current online format. Due to its large size, the DPAM permanent art collection solely lives in the CatalogIt HUB, which is purely a visual database for art museums. While meeting with DPAM staff, we took note of their concerns with leaving this massive collection unused and the hesitancy in museum attendance due to existing classist values in the art world.

Areas of Opportunity

Our team identified three main areas of opportunity for our project:

Virtual or online experiences in a museum setting
Using the existing CatalogIt HUB (where the permanent collection is currently stored)
Breaking down classist barriers for appreciating art

Secondary Research

We conducted research pertaining to virtual experiences, since our team identified an opportunity with the large and expansive permanent art collection in its current online format. Due to its large size, the DPAM permanent art collection solely lives in the CatalogIt HUB, which is purely a visual database for art museums. While meeting with DPAM staff, we took note of their concerns with leaving this massive collection unused and the hesitancy in museum attendance due to existing classist values in the art world.

Persona Building

Below are our three main personas who embody various ends of experience in the art world, virtual experiences, and breadths of knowledge relating to the DePaul Art Museum and its permanent collection.

User Flow

Our user flow began in the following order:

Call-to-action from existing DPAM site (DePaul domain)
User chooses to swipe on artwork to “Find Your Art Match”
- May choose to skip and go directly to 3D Tour
User receives results and can begin 3D Tour starting in their desired “art match” area

After, we fleshed out the details of how a user may (1) locate the 3D tour and personality quiz and (2) navigate the flow of events depending on one’s preferences.

Wireframes

Our wireframes, which were optimized for both mobile and web navigation, utilized a familiar format of critiquing art (like/dislike, similar to Tinder or other dating platforms). This promotes an easy-to-access avenue of deconstructing the classist barriers of understanding art; art is for everyone. Additionally, our personality quiz experience considers the potential difficulty in accessing the 3D Tour on a mobile device, so we included an “email me a link instead” button to mitigate this barrier.

One of the main points of feedback from DPAM staff involved ensuring that there was a clear distinction about the permanent collection tour not being reflective of what the current exhibition is at DPAM.

Prototype

With approval from DPAM to move forward in our designs, we set off to create a more robust and interactive prototype. We also included copy explaining that all art included in the virtual experience did not reflect the art inside the museum, prompting our audience to visit the museum in person if they wanted to see more. Another one of DPAM’s main concerns included maintaining true to the museum branding, so our team utilized the existing style guides in these prototypes. We also added swiping functionality to emulate the motions of the personality quiz.

Usability Testing

With our updated and interactive prototype, I sought to gather information on how users could potentially interact with the personality quiz leading into the customized 3D tour.

I created 3 Usability Test Tasks for our personality quiz flow. Within these tasks, we wanted to see how users would either:

find their #DPAMArtMatch,
begin the 3D Tour, or
drop from the personality quiz.

Task 1: Imagine you are a newcomer to the art scene, and you stumble across the DePaul Art Museum’s art personality quiz. Find your #DPAMArtMatch and enter the customized 3D Tour.

Task 2: Imagine you are an elementary school teacher who is wanting to show their students a collection of inclusive art. You know that the DePaul Art Museum has recently unveiled an exclusively online tour of their permanent collection. Find the standardized 3D Tour and begin the tour.

Task 3: Imagine you are a DePaul student going through the DPAM art personality quiz, and you suddenly want to enter the 3D tour. Enter the 3D tour in the middle of the quiz.

Some of the main takeaways from this round included:

More clarification needed regarding the liking and disliking interactions, as well as entering the standard 3D tour
When skipping the quiz, switch the orientation of buttons on the popup
Making the “Skip the quiz” button more obvious — change font size

Outcomes and Results

After our first round of usability testing, we refined the main interactions (like/dislike) and offer more clarity on skipping the quiz. We created a finalized digital experience, including: functional personality quiz and curated 3D virtual tour using 3D Vista.

Our primary measures of success included using Kanban methodology to ensure each part of the project moved along efficiently, as well as identifying any roadblocks, and our conversations and feedback from DPAM staff as a means of prioritizing staff and their capabilities.

One of the largest learning moments in this process for me involved defining the scope and feasibility of the project. To create a lasting product or experience, one must involve the current capabilities of existing or new staff as major considerations in their design process. In this project, we spoke with DPAM staff frequently and wanted to utilize services already within their budget (such as the CatalogIt HUB and permanent collection). In collaboration with PUSH Studio, we were also able to use an existing 3D software for our project, keeping overall costs low and maintenance abilities high.

I am honored to have been a part of creating a virtual experience for newcomers to the art scene and art lovers alike, and especially for those who cannot make it to the museum in person. This serves as a gateway to declassifying and decolonizing art. DPAM is in the works of hosting this experience on their website, so stay tuned!