Interviews

During the ideation phase of the project, I conducted user interviews to build new personas and inform the design on the dashboard and project flow. I prepared an interview script with 32 open-ended questions. I focused on our target audience’s values, motivations and daily routines in their current positions. In a span of 4 days I interviewed 7 users remotely, in which I located overlapping values between each interviewee. I referenced the user findings throughout the entire design process from start to finish. I found that across the user interviews each user emphasized the need for easeful collaboration and communication between teams, artists and resources.

Main Insights:

Google Suite offered an intuitive and accessible interface used among all interviewees
Templates for industry standard contracts and agreements
Calibration of all digital tools is necessary
Email is top priority as well as sending documents, exhibition checklists, and contracts
User’s would like to see artist profiles, to visually map artworks and exhibition design

Personas

I wanted to form a deeper understanding of our users’ goals, needs, experiences and behaviors. I created 2 main personas for each of our user segments. The personas are based on user interviews and surveys, I kept updating them throughout the design process as we gathered more relevant data. Each persona helped me step outside of my own preconceptions and reconsider my initial ideations. My first persona reflects my main target user, Museum Curator who is an expert in their curatorial practice, and likely already immersed in multiple digital workspaces. The second persona reflects a student of curatorial practices, who is educating themselves on best industry practices and want to maximize their workflow as they learn.

Expert Contemporary Art Museum Curator

35 / Female

San Francisco, California

Curator / Director of Curatorial Affairs

Masters in Art History

I am a self-taught Contemporary Art Museum Curator at a new art institution in San Francisco. I have a background of working for small non-profit organizations, but I have now landed a job at a major leading contemporary art museum where my responsibilities have increased, including higher stakes with exhibition planning, funding, artist management and contracts meaning staying organized is crucial to my success at my new job.

The Curatorial Student

24 / Female

San Francisco, California

Curatorial Museum Intern / Student / Curator

Bachelor degree in Global Studies, Anthropology + Museum Studies

I am an independent curator and masters student in Curatorial Practice. I come from a background of working in galleries and held a position as Associate Director. I am efficient in the administrative behind the scenes tasks of running a small gallery but hope to learn more tools that will help me manage larger exhibitions and will allow me to get to know the artists and their work during the exhibition planning process.

Motivations

Max fundraising for institutions and artists
Transparency, Inclusion + Ethics
Maximizing resources
Community building in the fine art world
Funding for advanced art exhibitions
efficient collaboration across digital workspaces
Relationship building between artist and Museum

Priorities

Discovering new artists + processes
Funding
Artist research + studio visits
Efficiency across all communications and digital workspaces

Pain Points

Staying on exhibition timeline
Fostering community
Organization across google suite, slack, Wework, and all digital platforms
Professionalism and efficient communication
Contracts
lack of resource pooling for institutions, including but not limited to pedestals, projectors, lighting, and other complex installation needs