Mind Splurge

Project Description

Mind Splurge is a UX design project I completed as part of the Google UX Design Certificate program. Mind Splurge is a California based museum that focuses on the intersection of Art & Psychology.

The Problem: People don’t have an easy way to book visits or gather info about the museum without navigating third party platforms or speaking directly to a representative.

The Goal: Creative a single, simple platform where people can get info about the museum, its work, its events, and book tickets.

The Prompt

Design an app and a responsive website for a public art museum to advertise exhibitions and events, provide museum information to patrons, and enable patrons to schedule visits.

Phase 1: Understand

Conducted qualitative and quantitative research to understand user needs and pain points. This included general user interviews, and research of first hand experiences online.

I then conducted a compeitive audit of five direct and indirect museums/experiences in the US and San Diego, noting their strengths and weaknesses, gaps, and ticket booking processes.

Some insights from my research include the following:

• A step by step ticket booking process is preferred, but with as few steps as possible
• Compeitiors have lots of images and info
• Some competitors tend to have cluttered, overwhelming, hard to navigate interfaces
• Some gaps include: The offering of numerous languages, and interactivity with other museum-goers (like a community forum)

Phase 2: Define

After my research, I created user personas to represent the target audience for Mind Splurge. These personas helped me empathize with users and keep their needs in mind throughout the design process.

I then created user journey maps to visualize the steps users would take to book tickets and access information on the app and website. This helped me identify pain points and areas for improvement in the information gathering and ticket booking processes.

Finally, I developed my user flow diagrams to outline the specific tasks users would need to complete on the app.

Phase 3: Ideate

This then allowed me to devlop a storyboard to outline the key features and functionalities of the app and website. I focused on the persona Ida, our German persona, as she goes struggles to book tickets for the school trip without a centralized website vs the process she would undergo with the website.




Finally, I narrowed my information architechture diagram to focus on the most essential pages and features for the website based on my user flows, personas, and storyboard.

Phase 4: Design

At this point, I was ready to start designing low-fidelity wireframes for the website. I created a few iterations of paper wireframes, focused on a simple, easy to scan layout with clear but informative navigation. I then finalized one, which i tranferred into a low-fidelity figma protoype.

Phase 5: Test

I was now ready to conduct usability testing on my low-fidelity prototype. I recruited 5 participants who fit my user personas, and had them complete a series of tasks using the prototype while thinking aloud. I observed their interactions and took notes on their feedback.

These are some of the main insights I found:

• Users want everything in nav bar. It helps users complete tasks faster.
• "Im lazy, i dont like scrolling" - Participant 1
• Users want noticeable CTA’s, such as a more noticable button for booking
• Users find the UI too large (Want to avoid scrolling at all during ticket booking process)
• Users rated most tasks easy to complete, rating most a 1 on a scale of 1 to 3 (1 being easiest)

Phase 6: High-Fi Mockups

Taking my feedback into account, I created high-fidelity mockups of the website in Figma. I focused on improving the navigation by finalizing a persistent nav bar with all key pages, making the call to action buttons more noticable, and condensing information/resizing UI components to reduce scrolling (especially during the ticket booking process.)

I developed a UI with paint splatter motifs to match the artistic and creative vibe of the museum, while keeping a clean, simple layout with lots of negative space for easy scanning.

I conducted another round of usability testing with 5 new participants using the high-fidelity prototype, and made a few more changes, such as adding a calendar view for ticket booking.

Try out the Figma protoype!

Reflection and Future Goals

This project was an amazing practice and introduction to hands-on UX skills. This was my first time working on a full UX project from start to finish, and I learned a lot about using Figma (my first time using it!), methods of putting myself in the end-users shoes, and iterating based on feedback.

I'm proud of the final product, and would love to continue working on it in the future by conducting more usability testing with a larger and more diverse group of participants, adding more accessibility features, and need to develop a responsive mobile version of the product!