AR Explorer
#AR #UX/UI
AR Explorer is an app with AR technology that aims to enhance small museums' popularity, to be used by tourists and local people. Also, offer visitors a more interactive and engaging experience.
MY ROLE
User experience design, User research
User interview, AR prototyping, Usability test
TEAM
Individual project
DURATION
6 weeks
Project Overview
Tenement Museum is a small museum in NYC and its tour mode is based on the traditional method in which the tour guide takes tourists around and tells them the museum’s stories. According to Tenement Museum’s mission statement, an improved visitor experience involving new technology can help them better achieve their mission. Thus, the project aims to help Tenement Museum better achieve its mission and improve its popularity.
Brief
How might we enhance Tenement Museum’s popularity and attract more youths to come to visit?
Problem
Improve the in-visiting experience via AR technique, and let visitors be willing to share their amazing experience.
Solution
Project Proposal
Secondary Research
Introduction of the Tenement Museum
The Tenement Museum is a national historic site located at 97 and 103 Orchard Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. The Museum's two historical tenement buildings were home to an estimated 15,000 people, from over 20 nations, between 1863 and 2011.
Museum experience
The tour guide brings visitors to every tenement and tells the immigrants’ family stories, so the visitors can gain a deep understanding by immersing themselves in their living space.
Museum mission
The Tenement Museum aims to build an inclusive and expansive American identity and helps people worldwide understand America's essence. These immigrants’ hard work helped build the city and nation. America would not be America without them.
Overview——United States of museums
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced that there are 35,144 museums in the United States, but only 70 of them are big national museums. Others are small or medium size museums and most of them lack proper promotion. Some of them are facing operational problems and may even close their doors.
Primary Research
Graffiti wall research
I did graffiti wall research with 14 people and gathered their answers to my six questions. All my participants hope the Tenement Museum could be bigger since they can see more exhibits in a bigger museum. But it is hard to change the truth that Tenement Museum is a small museum. So how to use the limited space to create richer content and more interesting content to attract visitors?
Current user journey
Shadowing research method: Acted as an observer and visited in the Tenement Museum
User interview
The user interviews were conducted with six people. Three of them are other visitors in the same visiting group with me, and the other three are my peers, around 20 - 30, who are my target audience in this project.
Findings
Most of the seniors are satisfied with the overall experience but the museum doesn’t attract youth
Potential young visitors may lose interest when they see the old building
Most people don’t know the existence of the museum
Pain points
The museum needs more effective publicity
The experience needs to be more engaging and interactive to attract youth
Needs
Design
Persona
The product is targeting youth around 18 to 35 years old to attract them to visit the museum.
Storyboards
Information architecture
Wireframes & user flow
AR prototyping
I used Adobe Aero to build the prototype and invited visitors and museum staff to test these prototypes.
Design system
Prototype
AR Navigation
Using AR techniques and GPS to navigate people finding nearby tourist spots.
AR Character
Bring history characters into real-life scenes through the AR function.
AR Photo
Take photos with virtual characters before favorite scenes.
Try The Prototype :)
Usability Test
I conducted an interview and a usability test with Tenement Museum’s Vice President, Jamie Salen, and got meaningful feedback from her stakeholder’s perspective.
Feedback from Tenement Museum’s
Vice President
“ Oh, that’s so neat! I will tell you that you have a historical character in a slightly modern apartment. But that's interesting, that’s so cool. I just think that you can put an actual character in the scene, I just wonder that because they're real people.”
Feedback1. The AR feature is cool, but be careful about the characters you put in scenes
“The other challenge for us is about creating avatars and manipulating them around. They are real people. We are very sensitive to giving people the right to manipulate them. ( If people put them in the wrong place or time period) We want to prevent people from getting the wrong information.”
Feedback2. It would be a big content project
After the interview and feedback session with Jamie, I found the actual situation of the Tenement Museum is different from the insight I got from my previous research.
Strengthening the connection between people through technology
The visiting mode, led by a tour guide, telling the stories of the tenements is a tradition and the essence of the Tenement Museum, and they don’t want to change that. It let me think about the relationship between technology and human beings. Sometimes, we want to build everything via technology but ignore the bond between humans. The product can assist the tour guide, especially since it can offer users more immersive experiences and solve the language barrier, but it does not replace the tour guide.
Build more accurate avatars
Also, I need to work on the avatar to make them fit in the specific period.
What’s Next?
Next Project
Tianmu
#Service Design #AI #AR
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