Artifacts
Experience museums your way — on your time, with your voice.
Many audio guide users find the delivery of information is quite arduous, distracting, lacking personalization, and lacking features. With Artifacts we deliver a customizable audio experience with tailored length, content, and voices along with extensive imagery, summarized recaps, and easy exhibit mapping. Artifact's minimalist design eliminates distractions and focuses directly on the art piece. With these features user can enjoy a simple, personalized, and frictionless experience they can take to each museum.
Overview
Client:
Coursera: Google UX/UI Program
My Role:
Led user research and UX strategy, synthesized survey insights, designed and iterated prototypes, created UX deliverables
Timeframe:
February 2025 - Nov 2025
Tools Used:
Figma, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Suite
Survey responses revealed that museum visitors aren’t opposed to audio guides — they’re opposed to being slowed down, over-informed, or trapped in linear listening experiences causing an experience full of friction. The core opportunity isn’t adding more content, but giving users agency over pacing, depth, and storytelling style, ultimately eliminating that friction.
Museums invite curiosity and movement, but traditional audio guides often stop visitors in their tracks, turning exploration into a waiting game.
Each visitor approaches art with different interests and time constraints, yet audio guides insist on telling the same story, the same way, to everyone.
When audio demands attention instead of supporting it, visitors are pulled away from the artwork and out of the moment entirely.
The Challenge
My Solution
Meet Artifacts
Tailored Depth & Length
While users preferred different levels of detail and duration, these needs clustered into three clear categories. A single onboarding slider lets users choose their ideal experience and instantly see the app adapt.
AI Narration
With over 60% of users requesting more engaging narration, Artifacts enables voice selection directly in the listening experience, giving users control over tone and storytelling style.
Mini Player Controls and Transcription
Many users prefer to read the descriptions over audio so a read along transcription was necessary as a complementary feature to ensure all who used it could benefit.
Artifacts main mission is to:
Discovery
My initial survey revealed that while most users had generally positive experiences with museum audio guides, several consistent pain points emerged:
Voices and delivery style lacked appeal — some wanted background music while others found the narrator dull.
Museum-goers want more control over how much they learn and how long it takes. Secondary research on audio guide usage patterns reaffirmed these findings, especially around pacing, personalization, and cognitive overload.
Competitive Audit
After comparing the top 5 apps in the audio guide space I learned there was an opening for a more premium and tailored experience. The app that was most impressive in this space was Smartify which targets many flagship museums and offers rich infomation for its users.
Diverse in race and ethnicity
Urban or travel inclined
Age
38
Location
Kansas City, KS
Education
Masters Degree
Occupation
Marketing Executive
Economic level
Upper Middle Class
Emma's Bio
Emma is a seasoned museum enthusiast who needs a personalized, richly detailed audio guide experience because she craves engaging yet concise storytelling that fits her busy lifestyle.
Frustrations
Boring & linear experiences
Lack of personalization
Overly academic narration that doesn't suit her interests
Behaviors
Planner: Emma plans museums visits ahead of time
Tech forward: Uses her phone as an organizational hub
Visual immersion: Prefers audio over reading placards
Motivations
Interest in art, history, and culture.
Personal time away from kids and family.
Prefers modern tools that integrate seamlessly with her lifestyle.
Goals
Absorb high quality, contextual information without wasting time on filler
Efficiency while exploring
Find a guide that balances education with narrative flow
This user persona informed several key features.
Feature Prioritization
By letting users rank their needs, I mapped everything into a priority matrix. That quickly exposed which solutions were worth building now and which ones should wait for a later release.
This included:
Narration/voice personalization
Tailored Length Controls
Transcribed guide text
Detail adjusting
Playback speed controls
Develop
Low-fi Wireframes & User Flow
Once features were prioritized I sketched some wireframes of the homepage and modeled other pages based on it's language.
An amalgamation of the sketches worked best for the content involved. I continued with the prototype and focused on the onboarding flow where users must choose their preferences that would inform the rest of the experience. An emphasis on imagery was placed above the fold as a minimal experience was mentioned by several users in the survey.
A 25% dropoff rate & difficulty accessing features proved iteration was necessary
The prototype was tested to ensure it met user and business goals. Metrics from the the usability study revealed 3 key themes I would tackle first. Changes were made between the low-fi and high-fi prototypes to save on time and resources.
Theme #1: Navigation
Navigating the app was difficult due to repeat page layout and lack of labeling.
Insight
Users need a more intuitive way to orient themselves within the app.
Solution
By varying the layout and heirarchy I was able to draw a distinction between pages allowing users to form a mental breadcrumb of their experience.
Theme #2: Playback Controls
Many users were unaware of the media drawer and what its use case.
Insight
The media drawer should be more noticeable and clearly communicated.
Solution
To make the media drawer more noticeable I scaled it up, added hints of features in the closed state and increased it's contrast. The open state now has more prominent features and a transcription to better align with user needs. I also added a media drawer page to the onboarding to inform the user of this feature early.
Theme #3: Interactive Feedback
Most users weren’t sure if they completed the task due to lack of feedback in the prototype.
Insight
Solution
The main goal here was to communicate success better. I added interactions ensure the user knew they complete the task.
Additional Feedback from a Designer
Version 1
Version 2
Solution:
Early account creation added friction before users experienced value. I removed it from onboarding to prioritize activation and reduce drop-off, deferring authentication until after emotional buy-in. This approach protects conversion while allowing future testing to determine the optimal placement based on business and retention metrics.
Informed Response:
While AI audiobook narration has faced resistance due to emotional and performance expectations, museum audio guides are judged on clarity, relevance, and efficiency. AI is well-suited here, enabling personalized depth, flexible pacing, and on-demand storytelling. In this context, AI narration enhances usability and exploration rather than attempting to replace human performance.
Iteration Summary
User testing revealed points I was able to iterate on and find the best solution. The main changes were to:
Onboarding: Users can now enjoy choosing their preferences without prolonged interactions.
Navigation: Artifacts doesn't have more than 2 modes so a traditional nav bar was left out for now, so users had a difficult time orienting themselves. A slight variation in page layout proved to benefit the users in app awareness.
Playback Controls: Users needed a more robust playbar that communicated it could be opened. After iteration the playbar is more noticeable and understandable according to our users.
Interactions: The movement between pages and buttons has been expanded and communicates success much better.
Delivery
While crafting Artifact I kept user and business goals at the forefront. The result are a proven app prototype that:
Provides users with rich information that appeals to their attention and time
Creates a digital platform for any museum or independent exhibition
Builds customer engagement & gain users trust in a world where AI isn't 100% trustworthy yet
Key Learnings
During the creation of Artifacts it was imperative to know the user deeply and iterate constantly. Even iterating on the surveys proved to show more valuable information. Sharpening my skills with AI was also important as it will have lasting impacts on my work and the world.
In the Future...
Testing was a key component in making sure we met the users needs so my goal will be to continue to test components that users find care most about. Also, taking new critiques from designers will be my goal since that informed many great changes and provoked new design challenges.
Thank you for your time!
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