Concept project

App

Barbican is a well-known and recognised arts centre in the City of London and the biggest of its kind in Europe. Barbican offers a full range of well-selected events and exhibitions, across all the different forms of art. Art and design, theatre, cinema, and music. It also has a library, a conservatory, and restaurants. Barbican is a bold and solid brand, either for its architecture and its established design.

OPPORTUNITY

The opportunity was to design a highly engaging solution to improve the engagement between the venue and visitors. My team and I worked on different aspects of the experience and features. The three main elements to consider were:

1) provide tips and suggestions to visitor according to their visitor profile

2) include a social sharing functionalities across the main social channels

3) integrate all of their apps into a single app experience.

Discovery and Research

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

We visited Barbican to gather raw data, enabling us to have a better understanding of the venue and its customers. We also conducted guerrilla interviews with visitors and staff members during our site visit. We found out that Barbican's brutalist architecture impacts the experience, and disorient attendees which struggle to navigate it and locate the various rooms.

BARBICAN BRAND

The art centre's brand is also as solid, bold, and established as its architecture. The graphic elements develop both horizontally and vertically as the Barbican's building.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

British Museum - App

The museum's app reflects its style using light colours and clear lines. The free version gives access to featured artworks and shows where they are collocated inside the museum. British Museum offers a premium experience to enable more information and features.

Southbank Arts Center - Mobile responsive website

The website is bright, colourful and engaging. The venue offers numerous exhibitions and events, but at the same time, all the information is easy to find. Navigation is straightforward because the information architecture is well-structured.

Tate Modern - App

Tate Modern app is bold, fresh and artistic. It offers numerous features and users can enjoy personalised audio guides.

INTERVIEWS

We conducted one survey and 14 user interviews: 2 staff members and 12 visitors. We noticed that there are two main groups of users.

1) Users who like to plan

2) Users who prefer to be more spontaneous.

We also investigated what users think about reading reviews. Most of them appreciate to read reviews or share their thoughts about a particular exhibition, artwork, event or, in general, about the overall experience.

The environment also plays an important role because the majority of visitors like to feel engaged with the surrounding

Define

INSIGHTS

COMPETITORS: Most of the competitors offer intuitive and engaging apps, but none of them focus on a personalised account that track users' habits and give them suggestions.

PLANNING vs. SPONTANEITY: For specific events, people like to book in advance, but a number of users expressed that there was an excitement in spontaneously searching for an event.

GETTING INSPIRED: Some of the main reasons to visit Barbican are to learn something new and get inspired.

SPATIAL NAVIGATION: Visitors find difficult to navigate Barbican because of its Brutalist style.

AFFINITY MAP

PERSONAS

According to our research findings, we crafted 3 user personas. Then we narrowed the focus onto 2 primary personas, Nicole and Peter.

SCENARIOS and USER FLOWS

1. NICOLE

Nicole is attending an event at Barbican. She wants to upload a picture and share it on her favourite social network.

2. PETER

Peter wants to book an event for him and his wife tonight.

Design

DESIGN STUDIO

Ideas we implemented on our design after design studio:

1. Two different profiles: Visitor and Member.

2. Calendar: for members, it highlights events you may like according to your previous search and bookings.

3. Option to take pictures and share them on different platforms.

4. See other visitors' pictures to get inspired.

WIREFRAMES, PROTOTYPING and TESTING

We began to sketch, test and refine our designs. We began our testing with paper prototypes then moved onto low-fidelity, mid-fidelity and then high-fidelity digital wireframes. We constantly iterated on the design based on usability testing.