Sloppy Forgeries for DPAM

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Sloppy Forgeries for the DePaul Art Museum

Reimagining museum education with DPAM

Product Designer | Team Project | 2023/20 weeks

Applying human-centered design, this 20-week project focused on adapting Sloppy Forgeries for the DePaul Art Museum. The project integrated DPAM's permanent collection, updated the UI, and explored elements aligned with the museum’s goals to reach multigenerational guests beyond the university.

Context

Create an engaging museum experience beyond campus, considering the entire building, permanent collection, and digital programming, while balancing constraints of a small staff, minimal budget, and traditional museum etiquette.

Problem

Adapt the game Sloppy Forgeries to integrate DPAM's permanent collection, accommodate various player levels, and provide engaging features such as tutorials and leaderboards, all while respecting budget and staffing constraints.

Solution

This project was completed by myself and three other designers: Selma Elkasevic, Jack Chovan, and Ricky Avila. I took on a lead role in presenting design iterations between the museum, the developer, and guest critiques as well as designed the signature system in the leaderboard gallery.

Role

Approach & Process

Throughout the project we balanced feedback from DPAM, Jonah (Sloppy Forgeries), and guest critiques. In the course we engaged in goal-directed design which allowed us to contextualize the users’ needs while also balancing the stakeholders’.

Initial Interview with DPAM Staff

Our initial interview with the museum staff of DPAM gave us insight into constraints, goals, and anything else relevant to conceptualizing a solution. Below are some key takeaways from this interview.

Considerations

The whole building is up for consideration: interior, facade, hallways, stairway, etc.
The museum would like to engage members of the community of all ages and outside of just DePaul.
DPAM’s permanent collection is large, and the museum would like to have its feature considered.
Programming in the digital space is something DPAM would be interested in as well.

Constraints

The DPAM staff is quite small, so it is important to plan around not adding too much to their current workload.
Integrating tech without taking away from the museum experience.
Encouraging getting out of ‘museum etiquette’ without compromising priceless objects.
The budget for integration of this design is minimal, though there is possibly room for seeking funding outside of the museum.

Stakeholder Mapping & Interviews

After our first interview with the DPAM staff, we spent time doing stakeholder mapping exercises to prepare for stakeholder interviews.

Key findings from stakeholder interviews:

Participants that had heard of the museum/were aware of its existence still chose not to go
Exhibitions, price, location, and type/size of the museum were driving factors for choosing a museum to attend
Most of my participants have not interacted with a museum virtually outside of seeking information about visiting in person and were not necessarily interested.

Following our stakeholder interviews we were able to create 3 user personas to further understand users’ needs in the context of the problem.

User Personas

Goals:

● Visiting a easy/light activity ● Discovering new experience ● Convenience: free of cost & easy to commute

Frustrations:

● An “uninteresting” experience: nothing new, too abstract ● Inconvenient location ● Time consuming ● Lack of sense of community

Through our research and feedback, we decided to first pitch a Community Gallery concept.

The gallery would feature artists of all ages’ submissions of artwork displayed on framed monitors. This gallery is meant to engage with the community and allow members to feel more connected to the institution.

Initial Explorations

Feedback on the Community Gallery highlighted the interactivity of the idea, but there was concern about handling online submissions and the strain on DPAM's staff to filter and display the community submitted works. As a group, we reflected on our findings and decided to pivot into the Sloppy Forgeries adaptation.

Sloppy Forgeries for DPAM

Sloppy Forgeries is a multi-player indie game that engages its users with art through play.

Features we were interested in including in the museum's adaptation of the game:

Including work from DPAM's permanent collection
Easy/hard mode to accommodate different players
Walkthrough or tutorial function
Ending screen that communicates scoring and more information about the art
Leader board for high scores in the game
Improved UI for the player all around

Play Test

As we worked on the design of the adaptation and features we were interested in adding, we conducted a play test in DPAM’s flex space. The museum had limited areas for the game to live and they needed the ability to put away the game we necessary. At first, we looked into their entry-way area but found that the flex space was a better choice for the museum’s needs.

Low-Fidelity Prototype Highlights

Figma file here!

We experimented with both horizontal and vertical scrolling for the artwork selection in Home

An accessible game mode meant to accommodate players with differing abilities, specifically younger players, with a "coloring book" style overlay on the canvas

"Chaos Mode" concept to introduce sabotage items, but due to time and developer constraints this was not explored further.

Modal window meant to isolate and prioritize artwork information

Exploring the addition of a guided tutorial with a mascot type character

We explored different ways to communicate scoring on the winner screen and this gives users the ability to toggle an overlay of the original painting

Usability Test

We chose to use a t hink-aloud structured script that had the users run through four different tasks. This method of testing offered flexibility while allowing us to observe misconceptions of use in our prototypes. This is the flow we used to conduct the testing with our findings are outlined below.

Final Design

Following feedback from user testing and the developer we created the final flow below. We measured success in the balance struck between DPAM, Jonah, and feedback from user testing.

Reflection

This project required a lot of balancing of goals and stakeholders. As a team, we were frequently sharing our iterations of the design for feedback and it gave us the opportunity to work with a living project. I am grateful to the experience this balance has given our team.

The pivot in the beginning of the project provided valuable experience as well. Receiving and working with negative feedback is highly valuable to my development as a designer. I am grateful for the opportunity to experience a design pivot and to truly create something that would fit DPAM's goals. I look forward to applying the skills learned through that process going forward.