The Challenge

The general public has a positive attitude toward public art, but they don't typically pay particular attention to art pieces. Meanwhile, for individual public art makers, the process of completing a public art project can take very long because of funding and legal factors.

The Opportunity

How might we better aid the creation processes and increase the awareness of public art?

The Solution

Artventure is a platform that aims to raise public awareness of public art. It encourages people to explore and engage in the making process of community-based art pieces through the Augmented Reality feature of the mobile app

1. OVERVIEW

Artventure

Artventure is a mobile app service that features AR capabilities to help cultivate a love for the arts among the public. It encourages people to learn more about and interact with public art installations, as well as vote on and curate future public art projects. Artventure also helps artists and art commissions with collecting public opinions and raising funds for upcoming art projects.

Objective

Design a service for general public to be more involved in the public art creation process.

Process

Secondary and primary research—system mapping—synthesis —storyboarding—ideation—prototype—user testing—branding—video production

Team

Yuan Gao

Yang Hong

Michael Sawyer

Julie Lee

My role

Design research

Concept development

UI &UX design for App

Video production

Tools

Adobe XD

Sketch

Premiere

Length

12 weeks

Approaches

We started from the secondary research about the topic area; then we conducted qualitative interviews with 6 public artists and went to 5 different art sites to conducted 13 intercept interviews. After that, we sent out questionnaires to the general public and received 35 responses.

Secondary research

Through our secondary research, we hypothesized that people feel positive toward public art, and that the city provides adequate monetary support to champion it.

Primary research & Findings

We found the general public has a positive attitude toward public art, but they don't typically pay particular attention to art pieces and their interaction with public art is very minimal.

8 slides

For individual public art makers, the process of completing a public art project can take very long because of funding and legal factors.

We did a ecosystem map to see what elements are involved. Three main phases were identified here: planning, creation and the exhibition of a public art project. Each circle was divided into 3 main categories (from inner circle to outer circle): actors (people who are involved in the process), factors (things actors will consider) and activities (things actors will do in a particular phase).

Archetypes & Experience maps

We identified two types of archetypes and mapped out both the experience for creators and viewers to better understand the design direction.

Based on our research, we found an opportunity area…

How might we aid the creation process and increase the awareness of public art?

2. RESEARCH

However, through our 19 interviews with public art creators and people in the vicinity of public art installations...

3. IDEATION & EVALUATION

Brainstorming

Using our insights from research, as a group, we used concept ideation form to help us generate ideas for each stage. We filled out concept cards related to different phases and needs in public art. We At the end, we synthesized them into similar groups and selected the idea that best stood out.

Storyboarding & Evaluative research

We quickly picked a few directions and turned them into stories to show our use case. We picked AR as our main direction since it's an emerging technology and we hypothesized that people are generally curious and willing to play and interact with it.( from Pokemon go).

Service blueprint

Then we ran 4 evaluative interview with potential users to test desirability by using storyboard.

PublicArtTeam_InterviewNotes_Kate (1).jp

Questions for evaluative research_Amy .j

A service blueprint was created to identify the physical touch points, define what the users would interact with, and what components were "behind-the-scenes."

Wireframes in process

Usability testing

We did 3 rounds of testing with 8 people in total to test the usability of the app and users' understanding of AR.

What we learned from concept testing and usability testing

1.Viewers don’t have enough motivations to make a donation towards an upcoming artwork.

Change: Use art-related incentives(such as gift card for art related events) as a motivation for people to donate.

2. Many public art pieces do not have information with them. If the viewers wanna know the basic information, they have to check the title first and then search the title online. Through the usability testing, we found people tend to skip the AR camera function at the corner.

Change: Re-designed the information hierarchy, make the AR camera/ scan function a primary function and stand alone.

3. Makers have a mixed opinion about the reaction/comments section. They think people might be not respectful towards the artwork.

Change: Remove the comments function and limit the emojis people can use for the comment.

4. Makers think it’s not practical to have the public participate in the making of public art. They might not have the skills. Meanwhile, viewers think they may not have the time to volunteer.

Change: Instead of helping with making art pieces directly, we proposed that users can participate in the decision-making process of artworks.

4. Final design & Prototypes

Key Features

Discover stories behind art pieces

The information of an public art is unfolded when the AR camera recognizes the art piece.

Share your opinions on the art piece with the community

On site, you can post 3D stickers on an artwork and view others’ sticker contributions through the app.

Donate toward an upcoming project and get reward

You can support an upcoming art project by donating just a small amount. Small amount can make a big difference! You’ll also get an reward afterwards.