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Purdue Galleries

Class

UX Design Learning Studio II

Timeline

August - October 2024

Role

Team Member

Key skills Utilized

Programming + UX Research + Co-design

Project Goal

  • Create an interactive web page that would solve a problem within the community

  • Create a more effective way for Purdue Galleries to communicate with art enthusiasts, specifically Purdue Students

My Team's Goal

  • Create a more student-inclusive experience in Purdue Galleries

  • Design a user-friendly website that increases student engagement within the gallery

User Group

Key Stakeholders

  • Purdue Art Faculty

  • Purdue Art Department

  • Purdue Liberal Arts Students

  • Purdue Students

Co-Design Workshop

To begin this project, my team and I conducted a co-design workshop to understand our stakeholders' experience better, while also gaining valuable information through their potential design solutions. To begin this, we did further research into activities we could use to involve our participants in the design process, along with what the typical agenda of a co-design workshop looks like. Our participants analyzed two websites, the Purdue Convos website and the Purdue Galleries website. 

Findings For Purdue Convos

  • Very easy for students to navigate

  • Loads very slowly

  • A lot of people go to the Convos website specifically for tickets

  • There currently is no space to showcase student work online

  • The path of the Purdue Galleries page is extremely confusing

  • It could be beneficial to have a website gallery

Screenshot 2024-12-05 at 2.47_edited.jpg

Affinity diagram of our findings from our Co-Design workshop.

Co-Design Takeaways

Here are the main takeaways my team and I gathered from these co-design sessions

  • Aesthetics are important to have (especially when trying to attract art students) but information and effectiveness of the website are the priority.

  • Keywords make it easier for users to navigate the website.

  • The organization of the gallery's website was overwhelming and messy.

  • There currently is no space to showcase student work online, and student gallery spaces are competitive and limited.

  • It could be beneficial to have a website gallery because Purdue has a large artwork collection that goes rather unused and unseen. 

  • The home page should give an overview of the purpose of the galleries and main exhibitions.

After doing further research into art museums and more into the current Purdue Gallery website, my team and I decided that each of us should redesign one of the current pages. The page I did was the information page. I sketched what I wanted the page to look like and then I coded my design using HTML and CSS. Here is my final design for the information page.

​Our co-design workshop made it evident that there were too many pages listing information. Users found it frustrating and confusing to have to navigate through multiple pages to find specific information. Our solution was to include all of the crucial information for the Galleries (including hours, staff, resources, and contacts) on one page, rather than all on separate pages like the original design. We also created more visuals for the information to make it more easily readable for users. 

Reflection

In the beginning, I was nervous working on this project because it involved lots of coding, and I had limited experience with coding. However, as I worked on this project over time, it challenged my design skills. From completing this project, I've gained more knowledge in coding and discovered that I love working more with user interface design, and I would like to work in UI design in my career. This project was fun and challenging, and I am very proud of what I designed, accomplished, and completed with my amazing group.

  My contributions
 

  • Conducted a co-design session and provided secondary research

  • Helped ideate and plan co-design activities

  • Analyzed findings through affinity diagramming

  • Sketched and programmed the information page using HTML and CSS

  • Conducted user testing and made adjustments based on feedback

  • Contributed to documentation and presented in class

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