What is a LIFE subject about?

Museumism is a concept of an app for helping people to find the right 🏛 museums and exhibitions in 🇪🇪 Estonia. The concept was made for the Tallinn University course named LIFE (elu in Estonian).

LIFE is a study course of 6 ECTS (=156 working hours) and it is focused on project- and problem-based learning, where 🤓 students from different study areas collaborate with academics and partners from outside the university to carry out projects focusing on interdisciplinary problems.

Every semester LIFE subject offers students a wide range of topics and 🧑‍🎓 students can submit their ideas. So when a student chooses this subject at the beginning of a semester, they need to join a group. Group selection is based on student's preferences such as 👩‍🏫 supervisors of a group, the number of people already joined, group topic, study fields of group members etc.

In my case, I joined this project because by the end of my 3rd year at university I started to think about 👩🏼‍💻 UX/UI design career. I was interested in working on a real problem using my research and design skills. Moreover, the skills and knowledge of the mentors of this project were so ⚡️impressive⚡️ that I was not hesitating to join that project. Also, we had a chance to work with The Seaplane Harbour museum team, which gave this project a real-life experience.

🤓 Roles in the project and supervisors

The project supervisors were Associate Professors of Interaction Design (School of Digital Technologies Tallinn University). My team consisted of 3 members.

I usually get a 🦸🏼‍♀️ team-leading role in projects even if I have a lot of other tasks. In this project, I wanted to try another role and I also wanted to be more concentrated on 🔍 research/design processes. The team leading role was divided between my teammates.

For example, 🦸🏼‍♂️ Pavel was planning team meetings at the beginning of a semester using Trello and Google Docs, he was responsible for cooperating with The Seaplane Harbour museum team. Also, he was conduction 📋 surveys. By the middle of the semester, Pavel stepped out of the leading role and 🦸🏻‍♂️ Dan took a team-leading position. Dan was a bridge between supervisors, the museum team and me. He prepared information, data and other 🗃 useful stuff for the project and he forwarded this data to me. He also the main speaker of our final presentation in front of a huge auditory and the Seaplane Harbour museum team.

I was responsible for the main UX/UI design process. After every design stage, I had feedback from supervisors and some suggestions from the Seaplane Harbour museum team. The concept and design were changing a lot during the semester and I found an executive role in the project pleasant too.

Unfortunately, I can't publish the whole research 🔐 because according to the terms of the project we passed all the research findings to the Seaplane Harbour museum team, but I have a right to publish a part of it here.

What is the real problem of 🇪🇪 Museums?

The LIFE subject main topic was "How to improve the user experience of visiting a museum with the aid of technology". Every subgroup needed to find their solution to this question by the end of the "brief" stage.

At this stage, LIFE subject students visited the Seaplane Harbour ⛴ twice. The first meeting was held with all groups of this subject, including supervisors and museum managers/coordinators. During the first excursion, the museum team showed us what they would like to improve 🧐 in the museum experience through technology. We also had a round-table discussion of the problems we saw in the museum. The second time students visited the museum separately for having 💡 brainstorm with teammates. We all also got a museum pass for the whole semester.

📍 What we found after visiting the museum and discussing with the museum team:
💎 1. Museum lacks feedback from visitors.
💎 2. Visitors not involved in exhibition activities.
💎 3. There is no cooperation between museums.

What do people say? 👩🏻‍🦰

At this stage, our team conducted user surveys and user interviews. Pavel and Dan conducted surveys in schools among 👩‍🏫 teachers and students. I was running 3 user interviews in-person with our target audience.

After finishing with user interviews, questionnaires, affinity mapping and analysis it became clear that users have problems 🤷‍♀️ with finding museum and exhibitions that would fit their interests.

📱 Why an app for museums?

After the research stage, we already started thinking about an app 📱 for museums. We had some 💡 brainstorm session with our team and it became obvious that the existed problems could be addressed by creating a mobile app.

I did a comparative analysis and I found that there is no such app either in Estonia or in Europe. I did a user storyboarding for simplifying the explanation of the idea of the application. Dan presented my findings, user 🖌 storyboarding and our team ideas to supervisors and the museum team. After having feedback, I started creating rapid sketches for the app.

📱 How might an app for museums look like?

For creating a visual identity 🎨 of the app and starting with hi-fi prototyping I had weekly in-person meetings with supervisors, a couple of meetings with 👨‍💻 developers from Tallinn University and I also consulted with the Associate Professor of Visual Design from my university department.

We also tested the prototype with Tallinn University students. You can explore our prototype by following the link below. Please remember that this prototype was recreated because the original prototype was made under the Seaplane Harbour museum account.

🎉Final Presentation🎉

For the final presentation, I created a poster and slides. Dan presented the project on the final day and I assisted him during the presentation. After that, we had feedback from our supervisors, the museum team and we passed the final report to the Seaplane Harbour 🏛 museum team.