Context
Smartify is the world’s most downloaded app for museums. The core feature of the app is the ability to scan any piece of artwork, flat or sculptural, to receive additional detail to enhance the museum visitor experience. The app links the user to other works of the artist, smart links to similar pieces, or integration with museum-made audio tours.
Both being in the Culture & Heritage space, Mima and Smartify sought to join forces to create a next level museum visiting experience.
Brief
Mima and Smartify collaborated on a grant from Innovate UK to develop an extension to the Smartify app. The extension aimed to help users navigate venues, take curated tours with directions, and benefit from AI-driven personalisation features.
The project combined Mima’s expertise in UX and wayfinding with Smartify’s proven record as a top-rated app.
Affinity mapping of research findings
Activities
With few predefined requirements, we began with a divergent research stage. Initial competitor heuristic analysis identified a gap in the market for a digital guidance product. We established benchmarks for the different facets of the product vision, such as Spotify as an experience comparison, Google maps as a navigation comparison, and theme park apps as a visit companion comparison. The benchmarking stage was concluded by an internal explorative workshop, in which the team identified the target features.
A survey distributed in the team’s museum networks established visitors’ aims and motivations when visiting a museum and how these related to navigation. Meanwhile, we engaged with Mima’s inclusive design network, which includes dozens of individuals with physical or cognitive disabilities. Combining the findings from both activities enabled the creation of a set of user-representative personas and customer journey maps.
To close out the divergent stage, we ran a series of stakeholder workshops with museum partners across Europe. The sessions were designed to uncover how the Smartify app could better serve the interests of the venues themselves through improved visitor experience. The insights were coded and affinity mapped to result in a set of key principles, which then led to the creation of an agreed feature list, similar to a Product Requirements Document (PRD).
Next, we formed the feature list into an information architecture (IA), describing how users would flow through the app, the information that would be provided to them, and their available options at each stage, as well as where input was required from the AI engine.
This IA allowed us to step into wireframing in Figma, which we referred to as the low-fi prototype. To ensure the voice of the user was consistently present, we immediately undertook usability tests (UT) on the low-fi app with stakeholders from our museum partners.
Building once again on a fresh set of feedback, the team produced a mid-fi prototype, which addressed user issues and added imagery and more content. The mid-fi prototype was prepared around a specific museum experience at the National Gallery, London. This was vital, as we then conducted on-site usability testing with real users with the prototype.
Information architecture to define user flows
Outcomes
Due to the grant-based funding, Mima’s input concluded with the hand over of the med-fi prototype and a set of key learnings and user requirements to the Smartify team.
The project enabled Smartify to confidently step into a total brand and design refresh, integrating the successes of the med-fi prototype and baking the final findings into their forward design principles. The team have also released their AI-driven personalised tours feature, which was built from the flow we developed. An announcement of this feature can be seen in the live link at the top of this page.
Today, the scalable solution is available in over 700 venues in 30 countries.
The tested med-fi prototype