Behind the Glass introduces an additional interactive experience to the Burke Museum where visitors can discover artifacts in the research labs and participate in inquiry-based conversations with the staff through a mobile Augmented Reality app.
For my Interface Design course project, we were tasked to create a mobile app to enhance the Burke Museum’s current visitor experience.
Giada Sun
Feb - Apr 2020
8 weeks
Figma
Protopie
As a team, we conducted research, created concepts, and defined the IA, user flows, and interactions.
UX Strategy & Interaction Design
Translated the museum's goals into the ideal user experience at every touchpoint.
Digital Prototyping
Converted the UI mockups into an interactive prototype with Protopie
User Testing
Wrote the user testing protocol and led the user testing with participants
I also defined the tone of voice for the mobile application and museum signage to present a consistent brand message throughout the visitor experience.
In late 2019, the Burke Museum reopened with a whole new building, breaking down traditional museum barriers and inviting visitors to be part of a working research facility. Alongside the exhibits, visitors could view and interact with 12 visible research labs and workrooms.
This renovation was motivated by the broad reaction that the old museum was stale, dated, and not inviting to the audiences they wanted to attract: families, tourists, and millennials.
After my first visit, I was intrigued by the liveliness generated from activity around the labs and workrooms. There was an opportunity to evaluate whether this new addition to the visitor experience was fully meeting the museum's new goals and vision.
From observing the museum on multiple visits, we learned that the visiting experience is vastly different between weekday and weekends. Turns out, Sparks Volunteers and Open Door events are reserved for weekends only. But these are the two main components that engage visitors with the labs.
Weekday visitors are left to peer into the labs, curious but unable to fully understand what is happening behind the glass. This makes their experience alike visiting a traditional museum.
How might we provide visitors the opportunity to gain a deeper connection to the Burke labs on weekdays?
Behind the Glass is an Augmented Reality app that facilitates inquiry-based exploration of the Burke Museum's research labs.
A complete walkthrough of the user experience through
a visit to the Burke Museum.
After checking in, staff will introduce you to an additional interactive AR lab experience and prompt you to download the mobile app.
To get started, you will be guided through an introduction of the lab experience and a quick sign-up process.
Learn about any events happening during your visit.
Encounter messaging like,
“What do you see? What are you curious about?” as you walk by the workrooms.
Start exploring the labs with the app.
Learn how to maneuver the camera to reveal markers and interact with them.
Pan around the labs and workrooms with the phone to discover AR markers on the screen.
Tap a marker to bring up the information card of a 2D or 3D artifact, fossil, or equipment.
Select a question about an artifact to start a conversation with the Burke researchers.
Pre-recorded responses from researchers will populate into the chat interface.
Submit your own question if it hasn’t been answered.
Researchers can answer them when they are available and add them to the of public questions.
Learn more about an individual lab and the people that work there. Check out a researcher's role and what they have been working on recently through photos or the timeline feature.
Starting from our research
Through an interview with the Director of Visitor Experience, we learned about their process of
designing the new building and the key elements to their visitor experience.
“Our goal is to compel all visitors to believe and take away that
the new burke is alive.”
Kate Fernandez
Director of Interpretation and Visitor Experience
To be alive, the museum should be filled with activity from both staff and visitors. To accomplish this, the museum considers how the researchers conduct their work and how they communicate it to the visitors.
We took multiple trips to the museum to observe and talk to the staff and visitors.
We identified four main components of the lab experience that work in conjunction to provide a balance of passive and active learning activities.
However, the museum eliminates the opportunity for visitors to participate in active learning by not providing Sparks Volunteers and open door events on weekdays.
01
Weekday visitors do not have the opportunity to interact with researchers and volunteers who bring you closer to the real work.
02
Without the interactivity, visitors rely on the whiteboards to learn about the labs which are limited in size and the types of content it can display.
03
Labs and workrooms then revert to exhibits where visitors are just watching and reading information displays rather than engaging.
To emulate the visitor’s user journey on weekends, we wanted our mobile app to have two main features.
Explore and identify points of interests
Store information and answer questions
However, visitors should not have their eyes glued to a screen.
Before jumping into ideation, we agreed that mobile phones should not replace the entire experience.
In a museum context, phones should be a tool to mediate how we interact with the real world.
I proposed utilizing Augmented Reality technology to achieve both design objectives.
This interaction method allows visitors to use their device’s camera to explore the labs, never taking them away from what’s happening in front of them.
Use object recognition technology to plant and identify visual markers on artifacts in the labs
Pulling out and using a camera is normal behavior in a museum setting
Embed additional multimedia content on artifacts that normally wouldn’t fit on a mini whiteboard
Keep the information with the object even as the workroom changes
Client support for AR
“A lot of these exhibits are ripe for AR. In biology and even cultural galleries, a big open field is adding more to the objects and their stories. Museum objects are inherently disconnected from their contexts. There could be cool ways to bring in context to say why it’s existing.”
Kate Fernandez
Director of Interpretation and Visitor Experience
I persuaded my team to keep the scope narrow for this project by focusing on the lab experience.
I believe keeping it limited to the labs would make it easier to manage and more unique.
The Burke already has well built exhibits that visitors can interact with
Focus on a specific use case, not make a more generalized design response
Limit the amount of phone usage in the museum except for designated areas
We created low-fidelity wireframes to define the interactions and user flows. I will be focusing on the
two core elements of our app experience.
Visitors are greeted by a modal that explains how to start their lab exploration with AR.
Visitors open the camera to pan around the labs with their device to discover AR markers on the screen.
Visitors can then tap a marker to bring up bottom sheet that will reveal further information on an object.
We had to figure out what kind of content do visitors want to see and
how should it be presented to visitors in a way that feels engaging.
Gathering Content
Visitors often just want to know what researchers are working on or some background information on an artifact or specimen rather than anything overly technical.
So we found that most of the visitor’s questions are quite straightforward and can be anticipated. They often follow a simple formula:
While this does not cover ALL visitor questions, we believe this is a good baseline for the staff to build content around these types of questions.
Delivering Content
My vision was to frame the content so that it would still resemble the dialogue a visitor would have with a Spark’s volunteer.
Visitors will initiate a conversation by asking (selecting) a question on the app. The answer will then surface containing text, images, video, etc.
Designing the content creation side of the app for the Burke staff was not in the scope for this project due to time constraints. But it was important to consider how these stakeholders will be impacted by this new experience proposal.
We recognized we could be increasing the workload of the researchers if they had to regularly scan new artifacts and write questions/answers as they are working.
However, this is a practice they are already doing for social media.
I found that the Burke Staff regularly post on their public Twitter accounts with photos and video of their work, background information on artifacts, and even answer questions from other users.
← Elaborates to provide more context
Similar types of questions →
To test with participants, I converted our wireframes into an interactive prototype with Protopie. The prototype utilizes a gyroscope sensor to simulate the AR exploration interaction.
Testing Method
Tested with 5 participants
3 tasks in an imaginary museum setting
Testing Goal
Our goal was to observe whether the onboarding instructions were clear and if the user flows were easy to navigate.
Participants felt the responses to the questions were too dense and formal to resemble a conversation-like interaction. They wanted to feel like they were chatting with a Burke staff member.
We expanded on the idea of conversational dialogue by breaking up the response content into more digestible units and presenting them in a visual dialogue format that resembles instant messaging.
In AR camera mode, content off-screen was difficult to discover. There was also not enough feedback for participants to recognize the state changes when tapping on markers.
We provided more visual cues to give direction on where they can explore. The green dots indicate the nearby AR markers which are off screen. We also added more motion to signal changes to the interface.
Participants had a hard time navigating the stacked cards. The IA was over complicated which resulted in too much page jumping.
We abandoned the card stack interface and opted for full screen content pages and a simple back button for navigation.
Keeping scope narrow results in a more refined experience.
Focusing in on the research lab aspect of the visiting experience helped us identify specific pain points, and create its own evolving, interactive exhibit.
Consider a holistic visiting experience to create smooth transitions between the physical and digital world.
For a museum experience, we have to design for the multiple touchpoints that would make the mobile app successful. This includes considering the entry/ticketing experience where visitors download the app, and how they will be prompted to take out their phone to use the app.
Designing the Burke staff's side of the app.
The next step would be to design how a staff member would input the content into the app. We would examine their workflow and documentation methods to create an intuitive experience.
User testing in the Burke Museum.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum shut down and we weren't able to test our concept in the actual museum. It would be valuable to hear visitor's feedback in context, especially for AR.
gabriellaychan@gmail.com
Last Updated — December 2020
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