Amon Carter Museum of American Art
Located in Fort Worth, the Amon Carter Museum specializes in American art, with a robust digital collection available to researchers as well as free online resources for educators.
Our team conducted remote, moderated usability testing to identify solutions for optimizing the findability and usability of the digital collection filter, search features, and educator resources.
Role
User Test Recruitment, Moderated Testing and User Interviews, Prototyping
Team
Bryony H., Cassandra C., Shreedhar V., Tiffany H.
Duration
10 Weeks
Tools
Figma, UserTesting.com, Zoom
BACKGROUND
But the Museum was concerned that their education-related resources were being overlooked, and that the Collection search and filter features were being under-utilized.
CHALLENGE
The Museum offers information and events tailored to educators on the For Educators page. In addition, curriculum resources were available on some — but not all — of the artwork pages within the online Collection.
In our initial client kickoff meeting, Amon Carter Museum representatives informed us that their analytics suggested little engagement with the curriculum resources within the Collection and with the Collection's search and filter features.
They were also concerned that about the effectiveness of their current Collection search. It wasn't clear that researchers were finding what they needed.
RESARCH GOALS
01
Understand how users expect to navigate to educational resources
02
Identify why users are skipping over the curriculum materials embedded in the Collection
03
Evaluate the effectiveness of the existing Collection search and filter features
After clarifying the current state of affairs, the Museum tasked our team with identifying potential solutions to ensure users were finding and utilizing these parts of their website.
USABILITY STUDY DESIGN
We recruited participants who reflect the Carter Museum's target users for these resources — K-12 educators and academic researchers — to complete a series of sample tasks during remote, moderated testing sessions.
PARTICIPANT RECRUITMENT
Since the Carter Museum's educational resources and Collection are intended for educators and researchers, we focused our recruiting on those with experience with art, education, and museums.
After reaching out to art history professors at Pratt Institute and our personal networks, we selected eight participants, including four art historians, three K-12 educators, and one art conservator.
Recruitment Criteria:
~25-60 years of age
Educators, students, academics, researchers
Some experience visiting museums and their websites for educational or research purposes
Enjoys or appreciates art from an academic perspective and/or for pleasure
Lives in North America
USABILITY STUDY DESIGN
Integrating qualitative and quantitative approaches, we wanted to gain insight into users' mental models and expectations for where they might find educational resources, and how they approach the Collection search process.
Sample Tasks
01
Using the homepage, find information for educators.
02
Find artwork that students can go see in person.
03
Imagine you want to research a specific work of art. Find a photograph by Eliot Porter that only shows birds (i.e. no people in the photo).
Sample Questions
01
What do you think about the content on the For Educators page? Does anything stand out to you?
02
Describe how easy or difficult it was to find artwork with educational materials attached.
03
After exploring the website, what is your impression of the educational materials available?
FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommended changes to prioritize education-related resources within page hierarchies, reduce the need for excessive scrolling, and enhance the Collection search experience.
FINDING #1
5 out of 8 participants did not find the educator resources on their own. Many participants looked for this content in the Collection, but participants said that ultimately none of the main navigation tabs seemed relevant.
“I hovered over the top menu because a lot of sites have a dropdown and it makes it easier to visualize where I'm going and for what. Under the Visit tab, I would've expected something for educators rather than use the search function.”
—Participant #2
RECOMMENDATION #1
Additional dropdown options would give users a clearer picture of the content available on the site, especially enhancing the discoverability of the For Educators page.
FINDING #2
Participants commented that it was confusing to see the email newsletter first, and they didn't intuit that the buttons leading to other pages were clickable. More valuable content like lesson planning resources were near the very bottom of the page, where most participants didn’t reach or spend much time.
RECOMMENDATION #2
Since the For Educators page is under the Visit tab, the page should focus on visit-related information and shift the email newsletter section toward the bottom.
By relocating educator resources to a new page within the Collection, the page will more immediately connect educators with visit information.
FINDING #3
Separated from the search bar by space and color, checkboxes to easily filter the Collection by works on view or works with educator resources were overlooked by half of participants.
Participants also requested additional filter options to aid in refining their search.
"The things I look for in filters and specifically use, because all my research is in collections, is artist, date made, place of origin, and material."
—Participant #1
RECOMMENDATION #3
Additional filters for metadata like origin or art movement would enhance the search experience for both casual browsers and academic researchers.
Relocating checkbox filters for works on view and works with educator resources directly next to the search bar would confer proximity and priority on these filters.
FINDING #4
Several users overlooked the educator resources for certain artworks due to their location near the bottom of their artwork detail pages, between sections for related content and artworks. The change in background color also seems to signify an end to the most relevant content.
RECOMMENDATION #4
We can eliminate the need for users to guess or scroll to find out if an artwork has educator resources by adding to the right sidebar an icon with a jump link to the resources.
Adding icons underneath the artwork image also can help indicate functionality like sharing and downloading.
CONCLUSION
Our findings confirmed some of the Museum's suspicions about existing usability issues on the current website, and offered new insights as they pursued website updates.
Representatives from the museum expressed that our findings both matched and exceeded their understanding of the website’s current usability issues involving educator resources and the Collection, giving them valuable information as they move forward with their website redesign of these areas.
“I just wanted to say, again, THANK YOU so much! Your presentation was amazing! It was well put together, we love that you used some of our branding elements, and most of all, it was incredibly informative. We now have some fantastic information with which to make decisions on how to move forward.”
—Client Feedback
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