THE MET

Usability test and redesign of the Met’s publication page.

ROLE:
User research, UX Design

TIME:
4 weeks (April-May 2022)

TEAM:
Benjamin Fuller, Abbey Hurst, William Wolff, Amanda Yee

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or The Met, is a world-renowned cultural institution located in the heart of New York City, boasting an incredible collection of over two million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture.

As part of its mission to make art accessible to everyone, The Met also provides a vast archive of publications that are available for free online. In collaboration with Pratt's Center for Digital Experiences, my team and I were tasked with evaluating the audience and usability of The Met's publications archive, MetPub. Based on these findings, we developed a comprehensive set of recommendations aimed at improving the overall user experience of MetPub and making it even more accessible to art enthusiasts and scholars worldwide.

METHODOLOGY

To better understand the goals and behaviors of the Met's subscribers when visiting the site, we first sent out a screener survey to over 400 subscribers. We then conducted 8 in-depth interviews and asked participants to complete a series of tasks, including navigating, browsing, and discovering publication details, to uncover usability issues with the site and gain insight into subscribers' deeper needs, preconceptions, and preferences. With this data, we created a series of digital affinity diagrams in order to further explore and categorize emergent themes. This exercise helped us visualize our thoughts and narrow down our opportunity areas:

EFFECTIVE SEARCHES

LANDING PAGE

PUBLICATION PAGE

OPPORTUNITY AREA 1:

EFFECTIVE SEARCHES

Although our participants expressed a preference for browsing visual media, they tended to come to MetPub with specific topics in mind and thus ultimately preferred searching over browsing. Therefore, it is crucial to provide a comprehensive and intuitive search experience.

CURRENT SEARCH
PROPOSED SEARCH

OPPORTUNITY AREA 2:

LANDING PAGE

The landing page has quite a few visuals but with little to no context. Users found categories like “Favorite Titles” and “Notable Catalogs” arbitrary and did not provide them with the necessary tools to browse content effectively.

Categorizing content based on art movements, time periods, etc. would be more helpful for research-related browsing.

CURRENT LANDING
PROPOSED LANDING

OPPORTUNITY AREA 3:

INDIVIDUAL PUBLICATIONS

Researchers valued tools like Table of Contents to understand publications, while Focused Learners valued images and descriptions. However, many details and features were undiscovered because they were hidden under collapsed sections and tabs.

CURRENT PUBLICATIONS
PROPOSED PUBLICATIONS

FEEDBACK

After presenting our complete research findings and recommendations to a Product Designer at The Met, we wrote a research report documenting the study and our findings. Our client provided positive feedback, remarking that our recommendations were “rich and effective.”

LEARNINGS

I learned how powerful it is to receive direct feedback from the users and be able to ask them follow-up questions on the spot. The practical application of Moderated Usability Testing provided me with a unique opportunity to see the variety of ways people interact with the product and understand the logic behind their actions in real time.

The users make or break the quality of the study. Testing with relevant users provided deep, valuable insights that we may not have gotten otherwise.

Awww, looks like that's the end.

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