What is DePaul Art Museum?
DePaul Art Museum is a fully operational art museum that is sponsored and primarily funded by DePaul University. The permanent collection of the museum consists of over 3500 pieces from artists consisting of many different backgrounds and cultures
Creating a Modern Museum experience
Within the recent years it has become more and more difficult to get audience to be engaged with the content at museums, particularly art museums. Modernizing the museum experience and getting more potential stakeholders to attend as well as focusing on what is preventing DePaul Art Museum from being a more popular activity! All art experiences are focused on engaging an audience in forms of creative expression.
Overview
Identifying Stakeholder Values
Identifying what stakeholders value in a museum experience is crucial to understanding how we should approach the next steps of improving the DePaul Art Museum’s ability to engage users with their permanent.
We interviewed stakeholders of various backgrounds, ages and professions about the parts of a museum experience they value the most. Within museums there are many different ways of viewing displays and understanding what types of experiences they are most and least fond of will give us a start in the right direction.
Design Research
Some questions I asked…
What is your favorite part of visiting a museum?
This was asked with the intention of understanding what part of a museum experience is the most valuable. With this we can take perspective on where to being expanding on the experience.
Are you familiar with The DePaul Art Museum?
Gauging the stakeholders familiarity with DPAM can help us understand if there is enough information in circulation about the many great features of the museum including one of the highlights, its free!
What do you find the most boring about museums?
This was asked with the intention of understanding what part of a museum experience is the least valuable. Often hearing what users dislike about an experience can put the entire conversation to perspective and show us what has the most room for improvement inside and outside of the musem.
Who are our stakeholders?
We brainstormed who our stakeholders could be by thinking through who attends an art museum and grouping them by similarities.
Brainstorming
We had a brainstorming activity where we answered questions based on our research findings. This allowed us to narrow down our ideas into much more specific topics and ideas for improvement
After discussing what we could do to drive traffic to DPAM as well as better showcasing the permanent collection inside and out we found a few stand out types of solutions that we could narrow our focus on in order to test some ideas with the DPAM Staff and see what solutions they enjoy and prefer based on many factors.
The 5 key ideas we landed on were:
A virtual tour our guide for browsing the museum.
A Takeaway or free pamphlet for the museum, possibly with coupons for local businesses.
Creating a game or interactive museum experience
Outreach for spreading the world on the museum.
Improving the exterior of the museum in order to make it stand out a bit more.
Focusing on the exterior
I decided focus on the exterior of the museum. In my group we brainstormed a few ways to improve the outside of DPAM in order to educate the public on the access to the amazing art within the free museum.
We decided that two of the primary places that could be improved was the front of the museum and the side of the museum facing the Fullerton Stop.
In order to better visualize this I created these mockups so we could see what the side panels could potentially be used for.
We also provided renders for a few more options in order to improve the feature on the exterior of the building.
Presenting our ideas
We summarized our ideas in a presentation to the DPAM staff making to explain the benefits, concerns, and potential of each solution.
We had some clarification questions regarding to the budget an capabilities of the space that we were able to discuss with them as well.
Their feedback:
Cost seems to be one of the most important factors, this means that the idea of projecting anything that requires large complicated hardware is not the best solution. This left us with the side of the building and the front of the building.
The Staff seemed very interested in making a better use of the display on th side of the Fullerton CTA stop.
Moving forward:
Sticking with the 4 individual posters along the Fullerton CTA stop seemed to be the most practical solution to improving the draw to the outside of the museum.
A Change of Plans
Due to budget cuts at DePaul we were informed during week 11 of the project that we would not have a large budget for our section of the project. This caused us to look for engaging alternatives that would still catch the eye of passers by.
The first alternative we looked into was optical illusions as they would hopefully be just a decal that could be applied to the wall or created with other cheap materials. We found images that we could draw inspiration from.
The footsteps are still feasible due to the fact that they are low cost, effective and only semi permanent. We will also continue to find other ideas to introduce as options to create a more cohesive exterior experience for passersby
Control Testing and Iterating
In order to give the footsteps some more practicality we decided on two things that we needed in order to take he footstep section of the experience to the next level.
Durability: The footsteps worked well but the chalk version would not last more than a day or two in the elements. Our solution to this problem was switching the chalk to stick on vinyl that could be placed down easily, and cut for free in the IRL lab.
Effectiveness: We want to understand what kind of foot traffic and attention the building gets without our footstep variation. In order to do this we will be holding control tests by observing the DPAM on a day with similar weather and a similar time of day
Control Data Collection Plan
We will go to the Fullerton CTA stop to observe and keep track of 3 data points.
How Many People Walk Past
How many passersby look at the front of the Museum
How many people go into the museum
Using these 3 data points we can put the effectiveness of the footprints up to this data for comparison as long as we are considerate of the weather conditions and time of day. If the vinyl footprints are effective as we hoped, more people will look at the museum and possibly go in with them there a compared to this control data.
Physical Testing (Round Two)
Footsteps V2
We went to Fullerton CTA stop after we prepped 36 Vinyl footsteps at the DePaul IRL (Idea Realization Lab). Each sheet of 12x12 inch vinyl fit 3 footsteps.
We placed the footsteps leading up to the door from the corner of the CTA stop in the same orientation as the chalk footsteps as well as added the “Free and Open Chicago” Logo at the end.
Optical Illusion Testing
Using some tape as well as printouts from the current exhibit, we created an optical illusion inside of the front vestibule of the museum. This style of illusion was inspired by an image we found on Pinterest and thought was eye-catching and simple to recreate.
Results
The Vinyl footprints were not nearly as effective as the chalk footprints and this could be due to a varied amount of factors
The Vinyl Footprints were smaller and less eye-catching.
The footprints look corporate and not homey like chalk drawings.
The vinyl was lighter.
Creating an Experience
After the challenge of budget cuts, it was our new goal to create a multi part experience for the exterior of the building that would make it more inviting and feel more like a museum. With this we wanted to think of ideas for each part of the museums exterior that the opportunity.
We ideated many options for each location, specifically we were focusing on the 4 Posters facing the CTA stop, the front window of the museum with a blank white wall, as well as the writing on the front door of the museum explaining the hours of operation.
After some brainstorming I began by applying the gradient to the background of the 4 posters as I thought it would create an eye catching canvas for some information about the Museum.
Some of the key elements I wanted to include in the poster was the location of the museum, the #ArtAtTheL tag, the DPAM logo, as well as a QR code to lead interested users to more information about the museum.
There was a few different layouts that I tried, attempting to make a play on the classically imagine CTA or Train Stop map. Featuring a line that connects all four posters branching off for “stops” which contain the information we intend to communicate. All while the information on the posters is relatively timeless. The final two variations were one featuring a white background with gradient accents, the other features a gradient background with a white text. But both still feature the same information.
Designing The CTA Advertisement: The Process
When designing the CTA posters I looked to keep a few key factors in mind to make sure the poster is able to be left up for a long period of time no matter the exhibit or time of year.
Don’t display current exhibit
No time or season sensitive information
Eye catching
Call to action
One factor that I wanted to emphasize was the DePaul Art Museum logo that features a gradient that is very eye catching.
Evaluating the Design
In order to give the footsteps some more practicality we decided on two things that we needed in order to take he footstep section of the experience to the next level.
Durability: The footsteps worked well but the chalk version would not last more than a day or two in the elements. Our solution to this problem was switching the chalk to stick on vinyl that could be placed down easily, and cut for free in the IRL lab.
Effectiveness: We want to understand what kind of foot traffic and attention the building gets without our footstep variation. In order to do this we will be holding control tests by observing the DPAM on a day with similar weather and a similar time of day
Control Data Collection Plan
We will go to the Fullerton CTA stop to observe and keep track of 3 data points.
How Many People Walk Past
How many passersby look at the front of the Museum
How many people go into the museum
Using these 3 data points we can put the effectiveness of the footprints up to this data for comparison as long as we are considerate of the weather conditions and time of day. If the vinyl footprints are effective as we hoped, more people will look at the museum and possibly go in with them there a compared to this control data.
Reflection
Throughout the process so far I feel that we have been able to identify a solution that is practical as well as cost effective. I believe that there is a large amount of potential in utilizing the side of the building in a way to gesture that there is a free museum inside waiting to be explored.
I have been enjoying working in my group as well as working through the process of this full design process. Often times when designing in different environments I find myself jumping to conclusions for the sake of seeing a more complete version first. Through this experience so far I have learned that the more careful and considerate you are in the early stages of the design process, the more likely you are to succeed when putting the solution in place.