MuseMap

Case Study:

MuseMap is a digital tool designed to help gallery and museum visitors log and reflect on the art they’ve seen. A gallery owner highlighted a common issue: visitors often forget what they’ve viewed, making it difficult to define their taste—an obstacle for both art buyers and sellers.
MuseMap solves this by creating a personalized, interactive log of artwork, allowing users to record their reactions and discover patterns in their preferences. This not only deepens engagement with art but also facilitates more meaningful conversations between visitors and gallery professionals.

As the sole designer, I was responsible for creating the app from the ground up—from identifying user needs to designing the full UX/UI experience. While I collaborated with a gallery owner to understand the core problem, I had full autonomy in exploring and proposing solutions.
This project was completed over a 3-week period in July 2025.

Art gallery and museum visitors often forget the pieces they've seen and struggle to articulate what they liked or why. This lack of reflection makes it difficult for them to recognize patterns in their own taste, leading to a passive and less engaging viewing experience. There’s also no simple, intuitive way for visitors to track their emotional and intellectual responses to artwork in real time.

From a gallery owner’s perspective, the inability of visitors to recall or describe what they enjoy makes it challenging to recommend or sell artwork effectively. Without insights into a visitor’s preferences, it's harder to foster meaningful relationships, offer personalized experiences, or guide them toward potential purchases. This gap represents a missed opportunity for both user engagement and sales.

The primary goal for users was to easily log and reflect on the artworks they encountered during gallery or museum visits. They wanted a way to capture their emotional responses, track their evolving tastes, and build a personal archive of their experiences. From the business side, gallery owners needed better visibility into what visitors liked in order to tailor recommendations, foster deeper engagement, and ultimately drive sales. The product aimed to bridge this gap by offering a simple, intuitive tool that helps users develop a stronger connection to art while giving galleries actionable insights into audience preferences.

Grounding the Design in User Research
To better understand the needs of potential users, I conducted on-the-ground research by polling gallery visitors along Canyon Road in Santa Fe, NM—a location known for its dense concentration of galleries and an older, art-savvy audience. Through short interviews and informal polls, I gathered insights from over 20 individuals, most of whom were 55+. Several clear patterns emerged:
o Most visitors wanted a way to remember what they’d seen but didn’t want to interrupt the experience with complex technology.
o Many were not particularly tech-savvy, preferring familiar interaction patterns (e.g., large buttons, minimal text input, straightforward navigation).
o There was strong interest in being able to “look back” on past experiences and reflect on personal taste, but low tolerance for clutter or cognitive overload.
o These findings deeply influenced my interaction design decisions. The user flow needed to be unintimidating, highly legible, and direct, reducing any unnecessary friction.

Feature 1: Logging Artworks – Simple, one tap.
Based on research, I discarded more complex approaches like QR scanning or gallery syncs in favor of a dead-simple logging feature. Users can press one clear button—“Log This Artwork”—which immediately saves the art to your profile and offers optional prompt.
Design Decision: Minimal required fields, high contrast UI, and optional voice-to-text functionality to make note-taking accessible.
This approach respected the user's experience in the gallery while enabling quick reflection, even post-visit.

Feature 2: Emotional & Reflective Logging – Guided but Open
While many users were interested in documenting how a piece made them feel, they were unsure where to start. To support this, I introduced guided logging prompts that could be skipped or selected quickly—e.g., “What emotion did this piece evoke?” with visual mood icons, and a short prompt like “What stood out to you?”
Design Decision: Use of icons, sliders, and minimal text to allow fast input without overwhelming users.
The ability to reflect emotionally helped deepen engagement and encouraged more frequent logging.

Feature 3: My Art Taste – Making Patterns Discoverable
In follow-up conversations, users loved the idea of “understanding their taste,” especially when framed in familiar terms—like favorite colors, artists, or styles.
Design Decision: A “My Patterns” page shows simple, clean visual summaries: frequently tagged emotions, preferred media, and repeated artist mentions.
For older users, the emphasis was on recognizability and clarity—not data density. Cards and icons were prioritized over charts or heavy analytics.

Feature 4: Seamless Gallery Engagement
Business-wise, gallery owners were interested in leveraging user preferences to personalize their recommendations. Users, however, were wary of privacy concerns.
Design Decision: Introduced an opt-in “Share With Gallery” feature that allows users to send their art log to a specific gallery after visiting. It’s entirely optional and clearly explained in plain language.
This supported the business goal of better targeting and communication, while keeping user control front and center.

The design process was deeply shaped by direct user research with the target demographic—older gallery-goers on Canyon Road. By prioritizing simplicity, legibility, and emotional relevance, I crafted a user experience that meets users where they are. Iterations were driven by real-world feedback, not assumptions, and the end result is a product that supports both personal reflection and meaningful gallery engagement.

Although MuseMap has not yet launched, I identified several key metrics that would help evaluate its success for both users and gallery partners. On the user side, I would track log completion rate, return visits to the app, and engagement with the “My Patterns” dashboard—all indicators of sustained interest and reflection on art. For the business side, success would be measured by the number of users who opt to share their logs with galleries, increase in repeat visits or inquiries tied to those logs, and conversion rates for personalized recommendations.
Together, these metrics would help validate whether MuseMap was effectively enhancing user engagement with art and supporting more targeted, informed interactions between visitors and galleries.