Museum Event & Microsite Creation
Wouldn’t it be cool if museums took peoples’ interests into account when deciding on exhibitions? We thought so, too.
So, we decided to make an event and corresponding microsite for a local art museum in Madrid called CA2M.
Madrid, Spain
2008
Museums
Challenge
Currently, CA2M does not get many museum visitors. They have a pretty cool purpose, which is that they feature art from up-and-coming local artists. However, not many Madrileños know this about CA2M, and even fewer know that CA2M even exists. Only 25.5% of Spaniards had gone to a museum in 2021.*
In short, they have a publicity problem.
*Source: INE + Ministerio Cultura y Deporte
Key Numbers
The redesigned app features a clean, clutter-free interface, making it easier for users to navigate and access essential features.
The improved onboarding process resulted in a 35% increase in new user adoption rates.
The addition of personalization and customization options enhanced user engagement, leading to a 25% increase in user retention rates.
92%
of museum attendees go in groups
53%
of museum visits happen on the weekend
2019
was CA2M's last rooftop event
Photos of the interior of CA2M. Very modern, hip vibe
Process
We needed to find a way to get people more interested in coming to exhibitions at CA2M. We believed that if we could help people to better understand art exhibitions, this would increase CA2M’s foot traffic. Let’s get to it!
Research & Analysis: First, we wanted to find out what kinds of people go to museums, and in particular, go to CA2M. We looked at data from the INE + Ministerio Cultura y Deporte and found that 92% of CA2M museum attendees go in groups. These groups could be school trips, family gatherings, or tourist groups. That means that whatever we ended up designing had to appeal to a wide variety of interests.
We also found that 53% of museum visits happened during weekends and holidays. This informed us that we could base our event on typical holiday celebrations and/or current events.
Digging deeper: Thinking about both the need to increase museum attendance and create something that people really want to attend, we interviewed 4 museum users about what they normally do in their free time. Here are some of the most common answers we received
TV (Netflix, Disney Plus, Hulu)
Concerts/Music
museums/theaters
Sports events
Of those who said that they liked going to museums and concerts, they also prefer:
non-traditional and multidisciplinary art exhibitions
immersive and interactive art exhibitions
exhibitions with music
temporary exhibitions that have a relation to their interests
This is GOLD for a designer. Without realizing it, these users were putting their problems and needs right in our laps: they were bored of traditional media and museum exhibitions and wanted something a bit more outside the box.
We also did some field work and asked 2 CA2M staff experts what people liked best about their museum. Their answer? The rooftop terrace. In fact, in 2019, they held a festival about Self-Pleasure on the rooftop with music from local bands, art, and food.
Ideation
With people’s interests in mind, we started ideating from here.
Could we create a nocturnal event that fits people’s busy schedules? How about another festival/concert featuring local bands like the one in 2019? Maybe people could vote on what they wanted the museum to showcase.
To sort out the best ideas from the worst, we went back to our research. Our research validated that people need museum exhibitions to be experiential and immersive. They also need to be able to understand the art that they see. Furthermore, since the museum had such a cool space on the rooftop terrace, we wanted to take advantage of it. Utilizing these two gold nuggets of research, we landed on creating a new festival called CUSADA.
CUSADA Festival
Culture, Unity, Sustainability, Acceptance, Diversity, and Aprendizaje
CUSADA
Artist Page
One important detail from the musicians whom we interviewed had to do with after the event. They said they would appreciate it if their profiles were both easy to find on the museum website and stayed there after the event was over. This way, they could be easily found when people want to look back and reminisce after the event.t
Filter Mayhem
There was one more problem before we could finish wireframing, though. We also had to redesign CA2M’s event filters.
The way they used filters before was to describe a given event at a glance, like this:
The filters are the text in red in the left picture below.. Seems all fine and nice, right? Wrong! Before our redesign, they had over 40 filters going on! Look at the right picture, where I organized all their filters so I could see them all.
That wasn't going to work for anybody.
We gained some insights from volunteers who agreed to participate in a card-sorting exercise. We went from the above picture……to thist
It was essential we kept the publicos filter (type of in English) because our research informed us that 92% of people went in groups. Letting people sort activities based on their type of group gave them more freedom.
Bringing a sense of fun in
Lastly, we brought a sense of the museum into the website. Because the signals and visual cues that were all over the museum were iconic to the museum’s reputation, we wanted to keep them.
The finished product
Here is the link to our finished product. The flow you see here is a user using our date filter to find an event that suits them and deciding on the CUSADA festival. The rest of the flow is them reserving a spot. We decided to go with a real-ticket-style design for the QR code.
Because no-shows were a problem before, we also implemented a refundable fee into the booking process. If the museum manager told us that the number of actual CUSADA attendees matched the number of reservations, that would mean that we as designers did our job.
Next steps
Some next steps we would like to take are adding social icons to the event booking page so that people can share the events easily with friends and family. To stay with the original idea of giving power to the people, we would also love to offer 3 or 4 exposition ideas every month and have museum-goers vote for their favorites. That way they are actively taking part in the museum’s decision-making process.
Lessons learned for next time
Communication is the single-most important marker of success in a team. If I didn’t communicate as well as I did (how I am feeling, when I can work on a certain action item, confusion and questions that came up) this project would not have been such a success
I learned a great deal about making a design system during this project. It takes time, but creating a design system ensures consistency in all of the UI design.
dedicating time to a design system saves time and headaches in the long run. Nothing beats the ease of reusing components and dragging and dropping them from the assets tab in Figma