Museum of Contemporary Art
Your personal guide
The MCA App brings together voices from across the museum, including curators, artists, gallery hosts, and young guides. You’ll get more out of your MCA visit with exhibition and artwork guides in text, video and audio and find out more about the artists and artworks from the permanent collection that's on display.
If you're at the MCA, connect to the free wifi, make sure your bluetooth is on, and access more about the artworks and artists as you enjoy interactive exhibitions.
Creating a contextually immersive experience
The MCA App brings together voices from across the museum, including curators, artists, gallery hosts, and young guides. You’ll get more out of your MCA visit with exhibition and artwork guides in text, video and audio and find out more about the artists and artworks from the permanent collection that's on display.
My role
Project lead
Project type
iOS app
Services
Ethnographic research
Content strategy
Journey mapping
Concept design
UX/UI design
Interactive prototype
Giving visitors a
warm welcome
When visitors enter the museum and launch the app they're greeted with a welcome screen containing contextual information for exhibitions, tours and activities available that day.
This allows users a shortcut to the most relevant content for physical visits vs. say planning a visit from home.
All access
Whether accessing the app from home, on the go, or at the museum, the navigation was designed to promote and allow quick access to the most common user task flows.
Find art near you
As part of the project, the MCA has been fitted out with the latest bluetooth beacon technology. Now visitors can explore information about the artwork near them as well as take a peek at what is around the corner.
In addition the app shows the users location within the building, allowing them to easily find the nearest bathroom, bookshop or cafe.
Interactive
audio tours
Pick from a wide selection of interactive audio tours, such as exploring the museum by color or have the artist themselves give you an up close and personal tour of their work.
Fun interactive multifaceted content
The app was designed to give hands down the most comprehensive information around each piece of artwork – no more awkward moments hovering around wall labels!
Now you can enjoy super high resolution 360˚ zoom images, audio interviews and tours by the artist or curator and even videos showing the artist at work.
Personalised content based on what you like
Save anything you like, be it an exhibition, talk, tour, audio guide or artwork. All of your favourite items are one tap away on the homescreen.
The research findings showed a high demand for suggested content based on a users interests, and expected the app to know them based on their activity. So we devised an algorithm that will suggest content to the user based on their interests as well and push suggestion to them based on similar interests with other museum goers.
Member benefits
The app allows quick access to membership details including the QR Code which provides entry as well as discounts at the book shop and cafe.
We asked visitors for help
Armed with colored sharpies, post-its and a thick stack of template printouts we set up a homemade research cart next to the main entrance of the museum. We asked visitors if they would be interested in helping us create the next mobile app for the MCA and in return for 10-15mins of sketching we would shout them a free coffee from the cafe. Not only were visitors excited to get involved, they even helped us recruit people by telling other visitors.
We wanted the sessions to be fun and creative – no rules or guidelines, just one question "What do you want from the MCA app and how would you like to interact with it while visiting the museum?"
After several sessions over the course of a few days we had over sixty sketches, piles of post-its and hours of video recordings.
Research sessions with members
We sat down with members in several workshop sessions to discuss their current behaviours around visiting the MCA. In particular we wanted to know as a member what they expected from the app, and how it could enhance and personalise their membership experience.
Digital meets physical user flows
Digital user journeys had to be mapped to physical journeys within the museum and tested repeatedly. We were interested in creating a seamless experience across the physical space, the artworks themselves and the app.
Installation of the beacons
Beacons had to be enabled, installed, detailed logged and set up for optimum range without interference.