App Project: Redesign the Guggenheim Museum Map
June 2020
I decided to redesign the Guggenheim Museum Map. As a previous employee and visitor myself, it has been a challenge navigating their map. With a lot of families, foreign visitors and elderly visitors, I wanted this to be an easy to use map.
To make this project come to life, I partnered up with Marialisa Totten an Operations Manager from Acoustiguide. Marialisa and I worked together from 2016-2019 at the Guggenheim Museum. At that time, I was an Acoustiguide manager. I was in charge of the Acoustiguide Multimedia distribution team and managed a fleet of Apple products throughout the museum and including the ever evolving exhibitions.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
The Guggenheim Museum being a popular place in New York City amongst many visitors from across the world, the way they designed their Guggenheim map in their Guggenheim application is very critical to their business.
Looking through their app, working there and listening to the visitors feedback, Marialisa and I noticed a couple pain points.
THE PROCESS:
I Interviewed 4 users with a range of ages 18 to 50 years old. I observed the way they read the original map and they pointed a few things out they wish to have to make the map a little more easier to read. I also gave them a few tasks and I got to write down a few of their main paint points that stood out for me.
PAIN POINTS:
1. When looking at the map, I'm unsure what floor I'm on.
2. I would like to know which rooms are accessible and not accessible.
3. Icons and text seem confusing.
4. Where is the ticketing booth, cafes, family rooms and coatcheck.
5. Names of Exhibitions on display.
CURRENT GUGGENHEIM APPLICATION
To locate the Guggenheim Map in the application, you click the "brochure-looking" icon that is 2nd to last from the top.
This image may seem small to you looking at it from my portfolio but imagine looking at this from an old iPod, the Audio Tour Device. There's so many challenges in this blueprint-like map. We have only chosen a few pain points that stood out the most from the interviews data we collected.
USABILITY TESTING
I interviewed 4 users to perform some tasks to confirm if any of the pain points came up using the current applications map. For each task, they were asked to vocally explain everything that was going on in their head.
TASKS:
1. You want to buy a ticket, where do you go?
2. You want to use the elevator, where do you go?
3. You want to access the museum cafe, where do you go?
4. You want to access the family room, where do you go?
5. You want to access the coatcheck, where do you go?
TASKS RESULTS
These are the Tasks Results from the 4 Users. My users had a lot to say using this map. 3 out of 4 told me this map needs to be updated.
PERSONA
With the 4 users we tested, we came up with a persona. Having that for reference allowed us to create a user experience that would target their needs.
SKETCH
MY PLANS:
1. Change brochure icon into a (you are here)map icon
2. Add desk stations
3. Add audio icon station
4. Color key palette
5. Differentiate what rooms are a available and unavailable with colors
INVISION STUDIO
Re-Design Guggenheim Map in progress
I am using Invision Studio to show the few changes that will help make the map easy to read and navigate as you walk around the museum.
