02 RESEARCH
Why does it matter?
There are existing barriers that people face when viewing art. Though it is widely known that public art enhances livability, this is assuming that people are engaging with one another. We noticed that public art at its current state has a major problem:
The intention of public art contradicts the reality of the actual experience.
Even though there is a low threshold of entry, where there is no fee or particular time required to see it, people are not conversing about it.
02 RESEARCH
Analyzing Existing Data.
Based on existing information from stakeholder and field interviews conducted for the Pittsburgh's Office of Public Arts, we created stakeholder and customer journey maps. This helped us reveal how art viewers and other stakeholders interact with the city's art.
📑 Stakeholders
We distinguished our main stakeholders and analyzed each role and interaction involved in the public art scene. There are art viewers, art creators, maintenance and managers, property owners, and city sponsors. We verified with Metro21 to ensure we identified and visually displayed every connection and level of impact in creating and viewing public artworks.
📑 Journey Map
The customer journey map captures the current journey of an art viewer and clarified existing pain points. It helps break down steps that are involved in the process of actively viewing public art.
📑 Think-Aloud Protocols
We also conducted think-aloud protocols to analyze existing platforms, such as an art website by the local Pittsburgh artist, James Simon, to understand design opportunities that can improve the experience of learning about public artworks.
02 RESEARCH
Data Synthesis.
We interviewed 5 active art viewers and a local artist to create an affinity diagram that organizes our observations. Our goal was to better understand an art viewer's thoughts and processes when interacting and viewing public art.
📑 Affinity Diagram
From our interview notes and and secondary research findings, we merged our collected data and identified an ongoing problem in Pittsburgh’s public art scene. We found that:
There is little to no interaction between the artists and art viewers
Affinity diagramming session
02 RESEARCH
Feature Prioritization.
After finalizing what mission operators need to see and what information they need to access, we listed required features discovered in our research to start understanding how the structure of our interface might work.
This helped us better understand how the main interface should be designed and which features should be put at the forefront to execute tasks quicker.
02 RESEARCH
Key Insights.
From our contextual interviews and think-aloud protocols, there are 3 main barriers that people face in their art viewing experiences.
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Proximity
We saw that people, perhaps unknowingly, confined their experience with public art to when they were proximally close to the art piece.
“I would only talk about the piece with someone else if we’re near it.”
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Prior Knowledge
People thought they needed background knowledge to talk about art.
“I don’t feel comfortable talking about art unless I know something about it.”
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Privacy
People viewed art as a private, individual experience that should be unadulterated by others’ influence and interpretation.
“I don’t know if people want to talk about art and I don’t want to disturb others’ art experiences”
03 IDEATE
Storyboarding & speed dating.
We ideated several scenarios based on the needs derived from our previous activity and presented them to several participants in order to see their reactions to them. During speed dating, we went through all the storyboards with the participants to validate user needs and values, and identify conceptual risk factors.
Our validated user needs:
Users need privacy, otherwise they prefer not to participate
Users need useful visual and contextual information delivered in a non-intrusive medium
Users need to feel creatively empowered in order to engage
Users prefer an efficient way to directly contact the artist
Users prefer both ways of drawing and writing to encourage all users to express their ideas
Initial storyboards for ideation
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