Transforming the Wellcome Collection’s audio guide experience, with users now listening 3x longer
My role
Jul-Aug 2024
Duration
Wellcome Collection
Company
Product Designer
Role
UX
UI
User Research
Workshop facilitation
Skills
Problem
Wellcome Collection is a London museum exploring health, art, and human experience.
Its key accessibility resource, digital audio guides, were outdated and had serious accessibility issues. This put at risk the quality of experience it provided to 2 million yearly visitors.
I led a full UX and accessibility redesign of Wellcome Collection's Digital Guides over four sprints:
Delved into user research through Hotjar and moderated sessions in the gallery
Improved overall user experience through iterative design and testing, collaborating closely with developers on a lean, feasible product
Key results
Visitor
Accessibility
Award
1st place for accessibility among British museums
WCAG accessibility rating
AA
Average listening time increased from 2 to 6 min
300%
Challenge
How might we better support gallery visitors in exploring the exhibition through audio?
Let’s dissect the old experience:
Difficult to navigate
Stacked players and no visual representation of the stops make it difficult to find your bearings in the experience
Inaccessible UI
Small touchpoints and poor colour contrast are an obstacle for users with accessibility requirements
Broken user journeys
Users required access to transcripts alongside audio, but those were difficult to find
Poor loading times
Because of the stacked audio players, the page takes long to load which causes early drop-offs
Research process
Conducting a Hotjar study with 300+ screen recordings captured.
Leading in-gallery observation sessions with 5 participants
I generated these insights through exhaustive research combining quantitative and qualitative insights about the user behaviour. Some of the methods included:
Dissecting the behavioural insights through affinity mapping
Creating a user journey map as a summary of findings on the key pain points
Iterative design
The design process spanned 4 iterations, going from lo-fi user flows through to UX and UI experimentation, to a fully working prototype. That prototype was then used to run usability testing in the galleries.
Before & After
Redesign
Visual cues for easier wayfinding
Including depictions of each audio stop helped users orient themselves in the physical exhibition space.
Including audio transcripts
Allowed users to read along and improved their comprehension of the guide.
Navigation between stops
By splitting up the stops, we lightened the cognitive load and shortened loading times since we no longer had to queue every audio player simultaneously.
Accessible audio player UI
Considering colour contrast, touch fields and correct labeling ensured easy use.
Design solution
Let’s do a deep dive into new features of the guides that secured a 300% increase in audio play time.
Simple navigation
Indicate what type of aid you need: an audio guide, or perhaps a British Sign Language one?
New audio player experience with transcripts
Listen to the fascinating voices of the artists and curators, and read along.
UI updates
Wellcome Collection’s guides needed particular accessibility attention as they are used by a diverse group of users, including people with visual and hearing impairments.
Here are examples of how I handled meeting the WCAG’s AA accessibility standards while designing the guides in order to ensure their accessibility for our broad audience.
Key results
Visitor
Accessibility
Award
1st place for accessibility among British museums
WCAG accessibility rating
AA
Average listening time increased from 2 to 6 min