Case Study Overview

This case study will cover a 20-week project done at DePaul in collaboration with the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM). Our project focused on providing an immersive & interactive in-person experience within the museum that would allow guests to explore DPAM's permanent collection through a video game called Sloppy Forgeries, created by Jonah Warren. We set out to update the game for a physical implementation within DPAM that would create a competitive environment that would allow for new learning experiences and encourage a return visit to DPAM.

For an detail breakdown of the 20 weeks check it out here:

Documentation

Communication

I was responsible for handling correspondence for both DPAM and Jonah Warren to schedule meetings for feedback & to request resources.

Designer

I worked alongside my teammates to design, produce, and update weekly a prototype that demonstrated what a version of Sloppy Forgeries would look like in a museum context.

Group Leader/Organizer

I lead the team in weekly communication meetings and presentations with DPAM & Jonah Warren. As well as organized content within our shared file folder to maintain documentation of our project.

My Roles & Responsiblities

Partners

I worked on this project with three other incredible designers, below is what they contributed to this project.

UX Designer

Jack Chovan

Jack played a lead role in prototyping our final prototype of sloppy forgeries. He ensured that it worked smoothly and helped the rest of us with any technical questions involving figma and the prototype.

UX Designer

Selma Elkasevic

Selma worked on our scoring system and designed a pleasing score breakdown for players. She also kept our group organized and on track by taking notes, creating to-do lists, and reminders for our group.

UX Designer

Gwenyth Sword

Gwen took a major role in designing the signature system for high scores and played a role in leading communication meetings between us, the museum, and Jonah.

Problem Statement

DePaul Art Museum (DPAM)’s purpose is to connect people through art and ideas that explore the vast range of human experience and expression. With a focus on social justice and artistic innovation on a local and global scale, DPAM aims to create spaces that allow us to learn how to productively and civilly negotiate differences, understanding, and the unfamiliar. Furthermore, DPAM is “connecting people through art and ideas, while promoting the voices of marginalized artists and communities.”

DPAM has had a low visitor rate ever since the pandemic and would like to increase its presence within the community in order to bring more visitors to its doors and promote museum learning. Their goal is to bring awareness to problems within different communities (Latinx, Black, LGBTQ+, etc) through the creative use of art. As well as introduce their online permanent collection in order to connect those far and wide to the many amazing artists & pieces they cannot display in person.

Stakeholders

Stake Holder 1 - Commuter Student

I conducted an interview with a commuter student to gain a different perspective. Ivonne Sanchez is a commuter student here a DePaul that travels several times a week to both Lincoln Park & Loop campuses. Ivonne provided a lot of useful insight as a commuter student, she had always noticed the DPAM billboards and while they appealed to her she never had gone to see the exhibits. Since she commutes she is often standing at the Fullerton stop looking towards the museum, but a big factor on why she hasn’t visited is time and lack of knowledge about DPAM.

Here is a s key takeaways from the interview:

There is a lot of both physical (depending on size) and mental exhaustion when it comes to museums I do like exhibits that have spaces for sitting and reading or sections where you can sit down and watch a video, reading all the time can be exhausting especially with the amount of the text so having a different medium to convey information is helpful

Users & Audience

First we started off brainstorming our general audience. We all got together and on a sheet of paper we stuck sticky notes onto it of people that could be our potential audience, below is what we came up with:

After identifying a potential audience we picked specific groups from our list to focus on. Why might they come to DPAM? What would they do once they are inside? Do their beliefs align with the museums? If we determined that they were no longer a good match for DPAM they we removed them from our list. As our list go smaller and smaller we focus on their needs & wants when visiting a museum.

That is when we started to select our potential users. After going through several groups we landed on three main users;

Parents & Children
DePaul Students
DePaul Staff

We found that they had similar goals & frustrations we could address with the use of a game like Sloppy Forgeries

Goals:

Visiting an easy/light activity
Discovering new experience
Convenience: free of cost & easy to commute

Frustrations:

An “uninteresting” experience:
nothing new, too abstract
Inconvenient location
Time consuming
Lack of sense of community

After identifying our three potential users we created user personas below.

Persona: Parent & Children

Scope & Constraints

When considering the scope of this project as a group we had to think of what was feasible for both DPAM & ourselves. We also needed to consider the developers of Sloppy Forgeries, Jonah Warren, when considering changes and additions to the physical museum implementation of the game. We came together after meeting with DPAM & Jonah to define the scope of our project.

Scope:

20 week project
Figma prototype only (no access to game code)
Prioritize Jonah's needs for a museum version of the game
- Implementing a tutorial (current game lacks one)
- Easy version
- Displaying more info about the selected artwork (name, title description)
- Scannable QR code to save players "sloppy forgery"
- Some sort of leader board or gallery with top scoring paintings

After our group had identified the scope of the project we started to think about our constraints for our project, both involving the physical space at DPAM & the technical limitations involving the game.

Constraints:

Limited physical space in DPAM due to ongoing exhibitions
Game can only run on Window computers
- No touch screen or tablet capability
Needs two computer mice to play
- Must have a computer that has two USB ports for mice
Limited to figma prototype (no access to game code)

Design Process

For this projected we focused on goal directed design. We focused on using this design method since this allows us to focus more on our client & user needs to build a successful end product rather than focusing on a design method that builds off of smaller tasks and small prototype builds.

By starting off in a research phase our group was able to put together a better idea of our audience, potential users, and clients needs. After we had a good sense of that we could move on to modeling in which we created user personas and user scenarios to understand our projects concept and use better. Moving into requirements allowed us to set our scope and constraints, then we could move onto our framework where we developed our user flow and site map, and start wire framing and prototyping. After the prototype was done we moved on to refinement in which we took our feedback and made the needed changes.

Testing Process

We used "Think Aloud" testing for our prototype, we had go results with this testing process as we observed our users and recorded their thoughts as they said them out loud. We also observed users over the shoulder as they tested and recorded their interactions with the prototype. We also had meetings with the developer, Jonah, to discuss any changes and feedback he had on our current prototype build. Below is our testing script:

Results

After testing the prototype we recorded our findings down below:

Below is additional feedback we received from Jonah during the days we met and tested with him:

Over the 20 week period we went through several rounds of this type of testing, as we tested we updated our wireframes and prototypes. Below are a couple of old wireframes that I worked on:

After reviewing all feedback we got we made final changes to our prototype. Below is the finalized prototype on figma: backup link

Reflection

The project was both fun and challenging at times. I really enjoyed the opportunity to work with a game developer like Jonah and get their perspective on things that us as UX Designs don't always think about. It was nice to work with clients and receive feedback from them in a meaningful way. Most times you just turn in assignments and don't often consider the feedback as carefully, but when it comes from your clients who have a deep understanding of the context and situation in which you design for it becomes much more impactful.

I've never had the opportunity to do UX work before in this setting so it was refreshing and eye opening to experience it! Building timelines, setting goals, scheduling meetings, and project planning are all things I learned to do, while we do practice these things in school it was nice to finally put them into practice. I look forward to applying the skills I learned during these past 20 weeks into my future jobs and client work.

Going forward I want to continue pushing my prototyping skills to create more flushed out final products that can replicate the look and feel of what the client's final product will be while providing a great user experience for everybody.