Post 03: UX Design Statement

For my gallery, I have chosen one that will present older works such as baroque to mix the arts and history as I personally think they go hand in hand and aid within each other’s research. A common problem I have seen in art galleries so far is how they’re either very vague with information which can cause the user confusion and frustration while trying to navigate or they throw a large wall of text at the user as early as the landing page which can also cause confusion and frustration as they might not understand what they’re reading when there’s so much text. I believe I can remedy this with careful planning of my wireframes from very early on to keep a healthy balance between text and imagery which will be the most efficient way of making the navigation as simple as possible. Another way of keeping the navigation simple would be a navigational menu at the bottom like most apps which I haven’t seen very often when researching other websites. This will keep the navigation simple as the navigation bar will be in plain view and not hidden in any difficult to find drop down menus or down at the bottom of a page you need to scroll down in order to get to which are two frequent ways I’ve seen the meu be displayed on other websites and apps. I want to make the navigation as easy as possible by doing these steps as the age demographic for art museums is very wide and I want to make an app accessible for all ages and therefore I see difficulties in navigation as the biggest issue I need to fix. I am also working to include a page dedicated to the different artworks and where they could be located throughout the art museum as some museums don’t have clear enough signs to find a specific piece of art and while the rooms might be easily scannable it’s still a frustrating task and might also be inconvenient for other visitors trying to view artworks. Another feature of this page would be information of the artworks and artists as museum information plaques are usually quite small and hard to see which could be uncomfortable for some visitors who have issues with visibility. Also when museums do have information plaques, there is usually only one plaque per painting which would also make gaining information difficult if there was many people at the museum as visitors would have to look at the plaque one at a time creating congestion. Exhibition history as well as cultural information behind each painting would also be in the information page which would be a clear improvement from the plaques the average museum has as it would be more educational as well as more accessible for all visitors. I thought heavily if the app should have social features for meeting up with family members and friends or for sharing favourited art pieces but thought against it as I believe it would be straying too far away from the purpose of focusing on accessibility and knowledge.