Air & Space Connect: Engaging with history through technology

The task: 

We were asked to improve the website or build a mobile app for the Air and Space Museum.

We started by doing research, creating a survey, determining the kinds of visits people had — and by really talking to museum visitors on-site. After that, we went into sketching, prototyping, testing and then presentation.

Getting started.

First task was to write down questions that would answer the question: What can be improved in the Air & Space Museum experience, and how could a mobile app possibly help do that?

Survey results showed that most people only stayed at the museum for an hour, and actually didn't have a plan. They largely said they want to wander around.

Research and ideation

We used these questions to try and identify how people who visit the museum use it, what devices they use in general, how much time they have to spend there, and what kind of apps they use in their daily lives.

We sent out that survey and kept on moving. 

As the survey responses started rolling back in, we moved on to mapping out all the possible things we would need to know in order to improve the museum’s experience digitally.

We got some great feedback on our wall sketches

How to learn more

We wanted to create trip planners and time-frame based tours with turn directions, among many other things to help people “get through” the museum.

We felt a little lost, so we interviewed some real human beings! This is Deborah and I having a chat about Museum usage for her as a user.

After doing some human interviews, we found that mostly people went into this museum and wandered. They said they stayed for about 1–2 hours max, and felt that the place was amazing. That said, they universally thought it looked dated. Some said it was overwhelming. This was also validated in our survey.

Hmmm. 

Still no hard problem identified. More ideas were needed. 

Where to go?

We had to go to the museum!

Eva and I interviewed about 5 different groups of people. What did most say?

We interviewed a number of visitors and staff, and found that the big thing was engagement. This guy was awesome.

People are all there, it’s just that some weren’t engaged. They were on their phones. 

Problem: 

Engagement.

We didn't know it until we were physically there, observing and interviewing people. Younger generations visiting the Air and Space museum simply are not engaged with the uniquely American and hugely important technological objects and content throughout this museum.

These people don't just look bored - they are bored. They are disengaged!

Solution: 

Develop a minimum viable mobile app to help visitors interact with museum artifacts and their content through apple iBeacon technology.

This technology will allow for mobile alerts regarding nearby artifacts and viewing/sharing of content, building navigation and snapchat-style selfies with the artifacts (special filters to put a space suit on, put faces in a plane or space shuttle, etc.). 

The selfie - who would want that?

The process:

We had three people, Eva Heintzleman, Bonnie Fischel and myself. Eva and I were comfortable with project management, so we avoided that completely and stuck to the sketching, wire-framing and prototyping. Bonnie was much more comfortable with the visual design aspects, so we elected her our fearless product manager and presentation artist (don’t worry, we let her decide and she was happy to try it). Moving into the world of visual design is completely new for me, but we teamed up and moved from sketches to Axure wireframes pretty quickly. All three of us handled the initial research, ideation, mind-mapping, flows, survey and user interviews. Eva took the usability testing. 

We began by sketching it out, and testing.

We put our sketches in front of people as soon as possible. We learned a lot quickly. 

We tag-teamed the wireframing in Axure.

We build app pages in a first go-round, and then tested them out on everyone we could find.

Summary and what I learned:

While trying out new things can be tough, I think this proved a huge learning experience for each of us. Letting go of managing a project super tightly like I used to at Paul Hastings is tough, but I’m getting there.

More importantly, my comfort level with tossing things out and iterating more and more is rising. Totally cool. Bonnie did a great job with managing her first project, communicating early and often is key!

We ran into some trouble with coordinating efforts - while two of us were furiously wireframing, the one working on the slideshow took a slightly different direction with the look and feel of the product. In the end we brought it home - but I learned how hard it can be to keep everyone on the same page!

Unfinished business / Future plans:

This includes working turn-by-turn tour guidance directions within the buildings, full user profile pages, virtual reality (VR) tours for those who cannot visit, audio tours that match up with the nearest museum artifact, and possibly IMAX movie ticket purchasing/theater admittance.