Musumid
Description
Museumid is an iOS tablet prototype designed to make museum content more accessible for non-native English speakers. Developed as part of our 2023 Senior Capstone at Kennesaw State University, this project reflects how thoughtful design can create inclusive, real-world solutions
Client
Senior Capstone
Year
2023
Type of work
App
Project Summery
Task
Enhance the museum-going experience for individuals from diverse backgrounds, making it more accessible and enjoyable.
Action
Utilizing the Goal-Directed Design process, our team focused on breaking down language barriers to help visitors fully engage with exhibits.
result
The Museumid project is a testament to the power of design thinking and innovation in addressing complex challenges, and it has the potential to enhance the museum experience for non-native English speakers around the world.
research
A Multilingual Museum
Visiting museums in a foreign country can be frustrating when exhibit information isn't available in your native language. To address this, our team created Museumid—an iPad app that translates exhibit content, making museums more inclusive and enjoyable for visitors from diverse linguistic backgrounds. Led by our team lead, Matthieu Daley, we saw an opportunity to bridge this gap and improve the museum experience for global audiences. Using the Goal-Directed Design Process—spanning research, modeling, requirements, and design—we built a solution aimed at enhancing accessibility and cultural connection for all.
To shape a meaningful and user-focused solution, our team began with a competitive audit, analyzing six existing apps in the productivity and translation space. This deep dive helped us uncover industry trends, identify gaps, and find opportunities to set our app apart. We examined what competitors did well, where they fell short, and how their features aligned with real user needs. Alongside this, we conducted a literature review to understand how multilingual tools currently serve museum visitors. We found a recurring demand for multilingual support, yet noticed that most available solutions lacked usability and polish, leaving room for meaningful improvement.
Ethnographic interviews played a central role in shaping our product direction. Certified through CITI for low-risk research, we spoke with museum-goers via Microsoft Teams to explore how they interact with exhibits. Participants revealed a strong preference for native-language support, noting that most museum signage was only in English and not digitally accessible. We also learned that visitors often skim plaque information, dislike crowded spaces, and sometimes resort to tools like Google Translate. These insights gave us a clearer picture of user priorities, which directly informed our design goals and guided us into the modeling phase of Goal-Directed Design.
Modeling
Where Ideas Take Shape
During the modeling phase, we transformed our research into two detailed personas—Antonio Rizzuto and Katalina Williams—each representing common behaviors, goals, and needs of our target users. These fictional profiles, grounded in real user insights, helped us design a solution that truly resonates with our audience. By understanding how users think and interact with museum content, we were able to tailor features and functionality to better serve their experiences. Creating these personas was a vital step in aligning our design decisions with the people we’re building for.
requirements
Crafting Interactions and Interfaces
In this phase, we translated our research and persona insights into practical app requirements. By crafting context scenarios around the daily routines of our primary users, Antonio and Katalina, we were able to visualize how they would naturally interact with the app. These user-focused stories helped guide our design decisions, ensuring each feature aligned with their goals, habits, and challenges. Tailoring scenarios to each persona allowed us to prioritize what truly mattered to them and build a more intuitive, impactful experience.
Framework
Visual and UX Strategy
In the Frameworks phase, we focused on building wireframes—the structural blueprints of our app. These low-fidelity layouts helped us visualize how users would navigate the interface, without getting caught up in colors or graphics. Our team began by brainstorming different platform approaches, weighing pros and cons before sketching out key screens both by hand and digitally. This process allowed us to map out core user journeys, including the Key Path Scenario—the most common route a user would take—and Validation Scenarios, which ensured our design remained effective in less frequent use cases. This phase was crucial in shaping an intuitive user experience and setting the stage for a well-rounded, functional design.
