The Fred Eversley Exhibition was a large scale monographic exhibition at the Benton Museum of Art celebrating the Los Angeles Light and Space artist Fred Eversley. This exhibition was part of Getty Foundation Art X Science Pacific Standard Time Grant Initiative. As a UX intern for the museum, I researched, designed and developed a website to provide information on the scientific concept and practices behind the artists work in the upcoming exhibition. This project was a part of the
Example of Fred Eversley's recent exhibition at OCMA , Fred Eversley: Reflecting Back (The World) October 8, 2022 – January 22, 2023
Since the Benton Museum is part of an higher eduational institution, creating a safe space that fosters critical thinking/dialogue is crucial to their mission.
As this project was part of Pomona College RAISE Summer Undergraduate Research Program, I conducted needfinding to helpbetter the museum experience.
Museology Educational Methods: To make the language of the website accesible, I interviewed Richard Deeley, the Academic Educator at the Benton Museum to ensure the website information anddesign is informative to users of all ages. Here are the key takeaways:
Designing for Non-Design Audiences: Designing for non-design audiences, specifically in the museum context, can be challenging. Effective communication is crucial in order to understand the goals and needs of the museum and its visitors. It is important to advocate for design and its value to the museum, while being mindful of budget constraints and potential pushback from non-design stakeholders.
As the sole designer/developer, I was responsible for conducting research, producing sketches, wireframes, mockups and a prototype, and undertaking usability testing, and developing the MVP. I worked directly with the Getty Pacific Standard Time teams on defining key features, user flows, and researched artist's information to be displayed on the website, which were a vital component of this project.
As the exhibition is still under formation, my art historical research and user research will help the curatorial team to focus on what information to contain in the exhibition section focused on intersection of Eversley's with with science. During my research, I found ways to present complex scientific terms through chronology, concepts, diagrams, and archive images.
To ensure a wholistic understanding of the Claremont community's experiences of museums, I sent out 50 surveys(recieved 30 survey responses) to demographics ranging from 21-65 years old. Here is what I found.
My intial survey confirmed tha the top three pain points for users are the intimidation, lack of dialogues, and incentive to visit museums.
To dive deeper into the causes of these pain points, I conducted 7 interviews. Here are some root causes for the fear of museums.
The platform was designed for two different types of users: the ‘curator’ who is needs a mechanism for simplifying the scientific terms in Eversley's work, and the ‘museum visitor’ who needs to hire someone to carry out a specific job.
After presenting my research findings to the stakeholders, here are the key user needs we focused on.
After presenting my research findings to the stakeholders, here are the key user needs we focused on.
fter conudcting user interviews, I generated 100 ideas and selected 10 to discuss with the curatorial team. I drafted a tentative PRD with the core functionalities for the MVP. Here are the core topics covered in the website:
Since the Museum has never employed a digital supplement to exhibitions, I explored multiple ways to best intergrate the digital experience with the physical. I opted for a index page with strict heirarchy pattern to allow users to easily navigate between different information sections as they walk around the exhibition.
After nailing down the site architecture, I explored multiple solutions through a low-fidelity sketchup. Then, I prototyped several feasible design options in FIgma and presented it into the curatorial team.
I conduted 5 usability testings. Here are the changes to be made
Based on the existing art identity of the Museum, I consolidated a visual design system.
Benton Museum Art Identity, Image Courtsey Consolidate Objects.
A live MVP was built using Webflow. It served as a preliminary prototype to and is being iterated continuously as the exhibition planning continues.
The first section provides baseline introduction of the artists' work in art and science. From my user research, the key needs from museum goer are additional information regarding academic terms. Therefore, I designed this section to be interactive where viewers could click the key words and read their definition and its connection to its significance to Eversley's work.
After the viewer has a baseline understanding of art and science, they can dig deeper into the scientific processes Eversley uses.A key user need that I found was a desire to learn more about the behind the scenes of artworks. What is a lens and how does he make it? In this section, the viewer will learn about the machinery, craft and material he uses.
The last section is the interactive timeline of Eversley's scientific explorations. This section targets the user need for context, lineage, and history behind the artist.This shows Eversley's progression as a scientist, again, taking the viewer into a deeper backstory behind how he got to the way he is now.
