In the last 25 years there has been an upward trend in visiting arts, culture, and heritage sites. [1] With Covid-19 cases going down, museums and art galleries are slowly opening up again. MUGO is a mobile application that makes it easier for users to find museums and galleries near them or their desired destination.

Finding the best and most popular museums and art galleries in a new travelling destination could be difficult at times. It’s time to make finding and planing art gallery visits easier.

After doing market and user research I began to gather theoretical data and human experiences and understood how to start designing Hugo with the overall goal of generating value for both user and market.

Our museums speak volumes about our past and present...

User research focuses on understanding user behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. We have conducted 25 user interviews with individuals who are into museums and art galleries.

There was plenty of data available to us, so we used this to accurately define their user base, the way these users behaved and several possible use cases for the app. Here are some common users answers labeled as P1, P2, and P3.

With common scenario’s in place, we were able to define detailed personas, using our interview data pool. The personas looked something like this:

Without a clear understanding of what your product does, what problems it solves or for whom it solves these problems, ultimately there’s no need for your product. Our goal was to make sure MUGO's app solved typical online ticketing problems in a clear and simple way.

With the proper planning, we were able to confidently move into creating a lo-fi sketch for the app. We took the decision to focus more on the functionality and structure of the app, opting for low-fidelity wireframes with very little detail. Ultimately, we could add design elements in later, what was important for the users, was that the product (above all) was clear and simple.

User testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. So we decided to use this technique in our app with this tasks:

1. Log in or Sign up;
2. Discover local art galleries & museums;
3. Add something to visit later;
4. Buy or book a gallery ticket;
5. Find a specific meuseum via search.

We created a mobile application that is able to perform the business tasks. As the user enters the Home Page, MUGO sets an artistic tone and gives the option of exploring galleries near you or top rated galleries in the world. Showcasing the internationality of the app. UI testing gave us an idea of how to properly organize the structure of the application, providing the most positive user experience for MUGO's users. We understood the errors of our initial version of the application, which was focused only on the visual part.

The company's founders are planning to further improve their service, and launch the app so we still have a lot of work to do on the application together. So stay tuned!