Royal Collection Trust

Genesis & Research

After the success of The First Georgians, The Royal Collection Trust Learning Director invited me to submit ideas for interactive formats that could be used for upcoming exhibitions. I did some research on the sorts of young visitors that went to The Queens Gallery, and discovered that it was mainly school trips, between keystones 2 and 3, meaning 11 - 15 year olds.

I came up with a host of ideas based on the sort of digital media these age-groups like to use, and I went to St. James’s Palace to present to the Royal Collection Trust a host of different ideas.

They explained that they had an upcoming major exhibition on the art of the garden. They knew this would be a subject that would be difficult to engage younger gallery visitors around.

I explained how a Buzzfeed-style quiz could work well for this exhibit. It’s a format that would feel familiar to the target group, places the user inside the outcome, uses common behavioural patterns and has a social share aspect while protecting the data rights of minors.

Experience Design & Testing

On the way back to the studio, I jotted down a few ideas as to how this concept could work for the garden exhibit, to be called “Painting Paradise”. The concept was to ask the user 6 questions, inspired by the paintings in the exhibit, which would result in a garden style, i.e. “Medicinal Magic Garden” or “Wild Animal Garden” that would match their preferences. They could then share a virtual postcard from this garden paradise, and review highlights from the exhibit that featured such garden styles.

As I reviewed the exhibition content supplied by the Trust, I realised there was a UX challenge around the providing an engaging experience that could accommodate significant differences in the reading comprehension and attention span between an 11 and a 15 year old. The content needed to be considered carefully to ensure younger kids could engage with the information while offering enough depth for the older children’s interest.

With a view to informing as well as entertaining, I made a click dummy in Keynote with some sample content and some early designs, and set up a “friends and family” user-test to get some quick feedback. The kids really enjoyed playing with it, and although some of the younger testers seemed less interested in reading the snippets of text, and found some of the copy hard to understand when asked to explain it, they were still able to navigate through the experience and recall some of the facts they learned.

User Interface Design

The user test results inspired me to create a bold and simple look for the quiz, while in-keeping with exhibition design branding. To further improve the younger users comprehension, I used an information hierarchy where the larger bolded text introduced the concept, and the smaller text underneath provide further context.

I collaborated with the assistant curator for the Trust to write the questions and answers, and then began design on the user interface, created to fit neatly onto the iPads used for exhibition digital display. Over the following weeks, I worked closely with software engineer David Robinson to ensure the HTML5 development and implementation went smoothly.