WarhoLens
An award winning immersive mixed reality experience for the Andy Warhol Museum to help visitors understand the art and the artist better.
AR/VR Experiences
UX Design
Prototyping
Framework for the experience
Art appreciation generally follows a framework that combines curiosity, observation and understanding of the artwork. We decided to employ this framework to our solution.
By creating immersive experiences for the visitors that will help them learn about the three facets about the artwork, visitors can gain a better understanding of Warhol and his work.
We realized that for the servicization we want to provide, an AI-powered solution can provide:
As an Artist
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Inspiration
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Techniques
Situating the experience
Situating the experience is crucial as it guides visitors through the space, and tells Andy Warhol’s story in sequence.
By thoughtfully aligning experiences with the natural flow of the museum and with our framework, visitors can effortlessly navigate and engage with the curated exhibits.
Andy Warhol’s art is unique, iconic, and often not fully understood and we thought it would be a great opportunity to help patrons experience the art in an immersive manner.
To learn more, we set our research objectives:
We asked questions about:
Museum Visitors
Curators
Tour Guides
Front Desk
Souvenir Store
We conducted extensive secondary research, 10 user and employee interviews, and 12 survey responses.
What are they Saying
“I honestly didn’t understand the hype about Andy Warhol’s work.”
“It felt like a lot of paintings to look at but I was underwhelmed.”
What did we learn from site visits and interviews:
With these findings, we asked:
How can we help visitors with minimal knowledge of Andy Warhol gain an understanding of the artist and his artwork?
My Roles
User Research
Product Concept
Prototyping
UX Design
Branding and UI
Details
Team: Aishwarya, Maggi, Avanita, Riley
Timeline: 6 weeks, Fall 2023
The Challenge
The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is the largest museum dedicated to an artist in North America. With over 7 floors of artwork to enjoy, visitors often experience museum fatigue.
The Solution
A set of engaging, immersive experiences across museum exhibits using augmented reality and mixed reality. These enhancements help viewers immerse themselves in Andy Warhol’s world
Deciding on Mixed Reality
We explored different technologies that could be employed for this immersive experience and identified mixed reality as the apt medium.
We explored different devices including the HoloLens 2, MetaQuest 2, MetaQuest 3, and the Google cardboard, etc
Smaller field of view.
Bulky to use in the museum
Distorted view of the real world
Bulky to use in the museum
Distorted view of the real world
We then decided to adopt futuristic AR glasses that are lightweight to deploy the experiences to:
Nova's Capabilities (What can she do ? )
"I don’t use gear often"
Easy Rentals:
Rent premium quality North Face gear for your trips in a hassle-free manner.
"Borrowing gear and co-ordinating with friends for trips is difficult”
Buddy System:
Borrow or lend The North Face gear from your friends and navigate shared packing lists.
"I don't know what to buy"
Personalised Purchase :
Pick the right kind of clothing specific to their personal preferences.
"Packing for a trip can be anxiety-inducing"
Smart Packing:
A guided experience to packing for upcoming trips, with smart suggestions.
"I don’t know how to care for my products”
After Care:
Receive assistance on taking care of products or repairing/refurbishing damaged gear.
Watch Nova in action
SYSTEM DIAGRAM
GESTURES
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Tap
Tapping the object at a distance
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Pinch
Interact with the object by pinching at a distance
Drag
Pinch two hands together to move the objects
What I learnt:
Intention at each step
It’s easy to get carried away working on ideas that might serve as ‘cool’ use-cases but it’s important to keep a check on where we’re headed and align it to what we discovered during research.
Feature prioritization
The fast paced nature of the project taught me the importance of product feature prioritization. The impact/effort matrix is a great tool to help orient yourself and can show you what to prioritize.
Figma is your friend
This project gave me an opportunity to hone my figma skills. Through the course of my time prototyping, I learnt what to do and what not to.
If I had more time, I would:
Conducted user tests during and after flow design
Tested the designed conversation flow with users
Rethink the iPad screen UI and interactions
