Lafayette Art Gallery Website
As part of my Google UX Design certificate course, I was given the task to design a website design (including UX and UI elements) for the Lafayette Art Gallery. All aspects of the research and design were carried out by me, giving me a chance to really immerse myself in the UX design process from start to finish.
The main goal of the project was to create a website that makes checking on gallery updates and purchasing tickets easy and quick.
-
Research
The target user for the product is an art lover who visits art galleries and museums frequently, and therefore needs to be able to check art gallery updates on the go, as well as purchase gallery tickets with ease. During the research phase, the persona I created for the user story is Julia, a retired art teacher, who enjoys visiting art galleries on weekends. During the research I found that a lot of time may be wasted having to travel all the way to the art gallery location to find out about the exhibit, as well as queuing to purchase the ticket. If you are an art lover who spends a lot of time going to galleries, this wasted time can add up and become tiring and annoying. As well as that, a lot of art gallery and museum visitors are of an older age. These people may not be as tech-savvy and if offered the opportunity to purchase tickets online, want the experience to be straight-forward.
-
Insights discovered
1. People not only appreciate the option to purchase tickets only, they expect to be able to see information on the art gallery online. The information must be easily found, as well as straight forward.
2. For an art gallery website, visitors appreciate unique design elements. However, it should not intervene with the information on the website.
The challenge.
The main challenge I found was creating a website that is both unique and artistic (as an art gallery website should be, to entice visitors), whilst keeping it simple and straight-forward. Currently, art gallery websites tend to go to either one of the two extremes.
Sitemap
I began by creating a site-map, to consider the overall structure of the website. Whilst creating this, I was asking questions like “How easily can a user navigate the site?” and “How quickly can a user find the information they are looking for?”.
Wireframes
Mock-ups
Accessibility
To ensure that the website is easy to use for people with different abilities and impairments, all colorful images are kept in simple shapes, away from the text. Also all text is highly contrasted.
Then, I turned the mock-up into a prototype, which was going to help me test the website and ensure that the navigation is clear and intuitive.
