DPAM CAPSTONE

DPAM CAPSTONE

Hi there!

This page gives an overview of my B.S. in User Experience Design’s Capstone Project, which I am working on from January 2023 to June 2023. The course is partnering with the DePaul Art Museum to find ways to incorporate technology and the museum’s upcoming exhibit showcasing their permanent collection.

This project is currently in-progress, and all work displayed is subject to changes or modifications as the project moves along.

Currently, I am working on the Outreach group of the project. Our goal is to find ways to get people, groups, student groups, local businesses, etc. to know about DPAM and help build those lasting community relations that increase museum attendance, with a focus on technology-based ways to do so. The Outreach team consists of myself, Cate Wilhite, and Reece Laudano.

Please reach out with any questions!

Phase Zero: General Research

Before conducting specific research and meeting with the DPAM staff, we first refreshed ourselves on Design Justice Principles and conducted general research on museums and the art space.

During this time, I visited the Art Institute of Chicago - I go to the museum multiple times a year, but was particularly focused on interactive exhibits this time around. Between Being Not Truthful Always Works Against Me - an interactive motion-based video exhibit, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) - a takeaway exhibit, and recalling my experiences from the Barbara Kreuger exhibit - which was highly interactive, I began to get in the headspace of designing for interactive museum spaces.

Additionally, we conducted research on Design Justice Principles, provided by the Design Justice Network. At this stage of the process, I determined some of the core principles to focus on in this project would be:

  • Principle 3: We prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.

  • Principle 5: We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.

  • Principle 6: We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.

  • Principle 8: We work towards sustainable, community-led and -controlled outcomes.

In summary, the principles highlight sustainable, respectful, community-led design that does not focus on the designers as the experts of a subject, but rather as communicators and facilitators between those subjects and the general public. This is important in a situation such as this DPAM project as we are not experts in the art/museum space, and should rely on their expertise and listen to their wants and needs before making any assumptions or beginning to design.

Phase One: Stakeholder Analysis, Interviews, & Surveys

The first phase of our project was to conduct a stakeholder analysis. Who had a vested interest in the museum? Who could be potential future visitors of or connections to the museum? How might those groups be categorized or connected?

After conducting stakeholder mapping in groups and as a class, we set to conduct interviews and surveys to gather data about our stakeholders. These interviews and other data collection were done on an individual basis, with the final results shared as a class to create a collective data pool for us to work with.

My survey was conducted on Chicago-area participants in the age range of 18-23 years old. I gathered information on participant demographics, their experiences with art and large cultural institutions, and their experiences with or assumptions of the DePaul Art Museum.

In addition, I conducted a follow-up interview with one of the participants who met the criteria for several of the stakeholder groups we mapped - Chicago-area, young person, Spanish-speaker, and someone with family who speaks both Spanish and English.

See my stakeholder survey findings report to the right!

Phase Two: Research

After conducting a stakeholder analysis and gathering data from interviews/surveys, we heard from guest speakers regarding their experiences designing interactive systems.

Josh Tsui presented to our class on a few projects he had worked on in the past for clients through a design agency. One project was an interactive museum-like floor at the top of a skyscraper that was meant to be both educational and entertaining for participants, but fell short in meeting client expectations and engaging participants. A key takeaway from this example was to really listen to what clients are asking for, not just what you as a designer think would be most interesting, and to frequently test throughout the design process to make sure designs are meeting user needs. The second project was an interactive tour of SoFi stadium to draw visitors to the stadium outside of just game days. The project was a hit, and brought more visitors in, but some sacrifices to designs that the team really loved - such as the extended tunnel run - had to be cut short to move people through. A big takeaway from this project’s outcome was to ensure that all of your goals are practical and to know when to let go of certain elements in order to create the best possible product.

Toni Witt presented on agumented reality capabilities and the different softwares that are available to create AR experiences. I had previously thought AR to be too far out of my wheelhouse, and this presentation made the technology feel much more approachable and like something I could learn and incorporate into my project. A big takeaway from this presentation was that AR is programmed in familiar languages like Javascript - I had thought it would be different, complex languages I would not be able to learn during the timeline of our course.

After the augmented reality presentation, I further looked into the Mariah app, a social-justice app based on AR experiences in a museum where the art itself was the AR ‘trigger’. The app was created by a former DePaul School of Design professor, Heather Snyder-Quinn, and could be a resource to ask about her experience creating AR for a museum and gather advice/recommendations.

Phase Three: Project Pitches

For the second phase of the project, our class segmented into varying groups based on areas of need for the museum and personal interest. Cate, Reece and I formed an Outreach group, with the primary goal of finding ways to get more people to know about the museum through a technology-based product.

In our first ideation session, we came up with the idea of a DPAM scavenger hunt spread across DePaul’s campus. Using augmented reality (AR) technology, a web-based application would prompt users to visit different locations on campus, scan DePaul’s Tree of Wisdom logo as an AR ‘trigger’ and display a piece of art atop the logo or an adjacent building (depending on the in-person size of the artwork) from DPAM’s permanent collection.

Not only does the scavenger hunt introduce new guests to DPAM as an institution, but it also allows for the museum to display their nearly 4,000 piece permanent collection without the need for physical space in the museum.

Read more about the scavenger hunt pitch in the slide deck to the left!

Phase Four: Personas & User Mapping

As we begin to start designing our prototype, it was important that we determine our key users and their needs in order to design for our user base throughout the entire process.

We accomplished this by doing some user groups and needs mapping, and then creating six core personas to test our prototype against throughout the design process - a first-year student, a parent of a new student, a transfer student, an educator, a caregiver, and a young child.

Read more about our personas in the slide deck to the right.

Reflections

Reflection One, February 12th

So far in this course I feel I have improved my client-designer skills significantly. I have never been in such an immersive design process where site visits, meetings directly with clients at such a large-scale, and real-world impact has been so prevalent. I am confident that this experience alone will significantly boost my confidence in the professional space when communicating my design skills and process to others.

I also feel as if I have expanded my personal concept of what UX entails. DePaul’s program really only touches on strictly digital experiences - which may be a result of recent shifts in curriculum due to the pandemic - and I had not thought about UX in more physical, lived spaces. I am excited to further explore what the UX process looks like for more interactive and physical experiences.

I also gained a sense of confidence in branching out in my skills. I had not thought previously that augmented reality was something I would ever learn, but now plan to do so for our final project in the Outreach group. I feel more comfortable approaching these tasks and taking on that challenge.

Lastly, I am really happy with the way our group has been working together. I feel that everyone’s enthusiasm and work ethic is matched by the group and that we are having respectful and collaborative discussions that are guiding us towards better projects than we could create as individuals. I am excited to see how our project develops over the next fourteen weeks.