Gods & Myths Museum Website
Role: Sole UX and UI Designer
Time Frame: 2 Months
Background: The Gods & Myths Museum showcases the history of Greek and Roman mythology and history. The website details exhibits and events that the museum has to offer. It also includes all relevant information regarding planning and booking a visit to the museum.
Goal: Design a museum website, with a mobile version, that clearly provides information regarding its exhibits and events, while making it easy to plan a visit for not only individuals and small groups, but for school trips as well.
Research
Research Goals
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To perform a competitive audit with three similar museum sites to analyze the user journey from the homepage to purchasing tickets
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To analyze how a user would organize a trip for both small and large groups, like field trips.
Competitive Audit Key Insights
Design Goals based on Insights
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Make booking easy for all users by making navigation and information layout simple.
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Make information for organizing and booking a visit (individual/small group and field trip) easy to find and perform.
My Users
Based on my research I determined 3 types of users that would visit this website. With them in mind, I would keep the design goals and research insights in mind.
Here are the personas:
Sitemap
To simplify things and make it easier on the user, I limited the main navigation to visit, exhibits & events, learn, and about. The main user journeys would be to the visit section and the exhibits and events section, as those would be the most important parts of the site for the user to be able to navigate through.
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Main focus for these wireframes was to make sure the user could easily navigate to the plan your visit page. Making sure there was a call to action on each page that would take the user to plan their visit. The plan visit page would have info not only for individuals and small groups, but for users planning field trips.
High Fidelity Wireframes and Prototypes
For the high fidelity wireframes, I emphasized the goal of getting the user to book tickets. I also chose to split the general admissions, and field trip booking into different pages to make it easier to navigate.
I was also the sole visual designer. Based on my research and taking into consideration usability and accessibility, I made sure the visual design was both compelling and made sure website was easy to navigate.
For the prototypes I prioritized the main user flow that visitors to the site would take. That means from the homepage to exploring an exhibit, then to planning a visit, and booking tickets. One thing I wanted to emphasize was the ability to toggle between planning a regular visit, versus organizing a field trip. I wanted the transition to be as seamless as possible and the information readily available to the user, as opposed to some competitor's museum sites where the information was harder to find.
My Takeaways
Overall, I am proud of the effort I made and the results, but there were some significant hurdles that I faced if given the time and resources to change I would do so in a heartbeat
Given the limited time frame, I did not have the time to do a usability test for my wireframes or prototypes. I know that with my focus on my design goals, I made sure to address the challenges and insights from the competitive audit I did. However, I know that a usability test would have given me greater clarity for addressing those challenges and to highlight issues that I likely missed from personal bias.