Yayoi Kusama Museum Mobile Website
ROLE
Visual Designer, UX/UI Designer
TOOLS
Figma
Miro
NOTE
This was the solo final project for my Interaction Design class.
DURATION
April to May 2022 (2 weeks)
SKILLS
General Research, Market Research, Wireframing, Hi-Fi Mockups
“My hope in art is to spread the joy and the love of being human.”
-Yayoi Kusama
Introduction
The initial goal of this project was to understand a selected artist’s motivation, create a museum app to educate the general public about the artist, and to motivate users to come to the artist’s retrospective gallery. I selected the Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama, who is most well-known for her infinity mirror rooms and her love of polka-dots.
However, I quickly realized that user behavior and data would best support a mobile website instead of a mobile app. The artist already has a museum in Tokyo, Japan which has an accompanying desktop website, so I decided to condense and improve the existing website into a mobile format.
Final Mockups
Research on the Viability of Museum Apps
User behavior and data call for a website instead of an app. Museum goers are more likely to get their pre-visit info and onsite info from other sources:
Users also get more satisfaction from using mobile web and social media (both onsite at museum and offsite) than they do from using mobile apps.
These 3 charts are from a museum market research company called Impacts Experience.
Research on Existing Museum Apps
However, there are reasons why someone might download and enjoy using a museum app.
“The customer life cycle of a museum is a little bit unique:
Normally visitors do not return on a regular basis, and for the ones that do, the intervals of their visits are likely much more elongated.
So, why would someone download an app that has a one-time (or a few times at best) purpose?
Free, personalized tour (guided map and/or audio)
Group discussions (comments online)
Assistance for visitors with other needs”
Yayoi Kusama and her Art
Yayoi’s artwork is unpredictable, which is powerful in keeping museum goers interested in revisiting the website and the museum.
Reviewing the Existing Yayoi Kusama Museum Website
Here we have the museum’s existing desktop website and mobile website translated from Japanese to English. The breakpoints are for mobile and desktop, there isn’t a tablet size.
Sketches & Wireframes
Final Mockups
If I had More Time…
Contact the Yayoi Kusama Museum to assist with the responsive design for the website.
Research designing for a Japanese audience and/or hire a native contractor. The main audience for the museum is not only tourists but also the people who live in that area.
Mirror the mobile site style back to the desktop site, and also create a tablet size site for responsiveness. Although, given that it’s not a big company, it might be okay with only one breakpoint.
Prototype the mobile website and do user testing.
Main Takeaways
Creating with the artist in mind was exciting and helped my design be more emotive. I’m glad that I thought through the user scenarios before starting the design, because I was able to see that a website would be more appropriate for the audience and also save time and money from not creating an app from scratch.