MUSEUM App
Product Development
Project Overview
The MUSEUM App is a city-based app that includes more than 50 museums in 10+ cities around the world.
My Responsibilities
· Guide project from conception to execution
· Conduct User Research
· Write code (technologies: XCODE, SwiftUI, cocoapods, SDKs, GitHub, Firestore)
· Product roadmap planning
· App prototyping (Technologie : Figma)
· Feature development
· Back-end development
· Product planning, development, and management
User Personas
I’ve decided to focus on the first user persona.
User Story
- Visual museum diary
As a metropolitan who moves to a new city every 2-4 years and goes on business trips every month, I want to keep track of all the museums I’ve visited in different cities, so that I have a visual diary for museums to look back on. - Find famous museums & its collection
As a metropolitan who moves to a new city every 2-4 years and goes on business trips every month, I want to know the museums of my destination and its most-known collection ahead of time, so that I can spend the least amount of time planning my travels. - Discover new museums of a city
As a metropolitan who moves to a new city every 2-4 years and goes on business trips every month, I want to discover new museums of a city so that I never run out of museums to visit during the weekends in whatever city.
Prioritization
Implementations
User Story 1: Discover new museums of a city
To help users discover new museums of a certain city, I designed the app to be city-based. What this entails is that users are able to browse or find museums based on the city the selected in the drop-down menu.
By swiping right or left, users can browse all the museums of the city they selected. By clicking on that museum, users will be led to a detailed view of that museum.
User Story 2: Know the famous collections of a museum
From the detailed view of that museum, users can tap on the ‘See collection’ button. This will lead to a new page that contains a brief introduction of that museum, along with images and descriptions if that museum’s famous collections.
User Story 3: Visual Museum Diary
Again, from the detailed view, users can save the museum to visited, favorite, and/or wish list. This information will be saved to the user’s home page, allowing users to keep track of all the museums he/she saved under the three options.
User Story Map
Final Product Outline
MUSEUM is a city-based app largely inspired by my all-time favorite app Letterboxed. It uses the MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) architectural pattern and has a database built with Firestore. It allows users to browse museums based on city of choice; There is also a search bar that enables users to search for a museum based on its name. Once clicked on the desired museum, it leads to a detailed view of the museum that includes information including the address, name of director, and found date of that museum. It also contains more photos of that museum so users can have a better glimpse of the architecture and exhibition design of that museum. There is also a tab ‘See Collection’ that leads to a page containing a brief description of that museum, along with the famous collections it holds.
Current Challenge: Large fee associated with image copy right
I have contacted various museums and learned that each image I use will cost approximate 100 USD. This implies that, as a new grad, I will be broke after legally including 5 museums in the app. To solve this problem with the least amount of money, I have come up with the following solutions:
1. Include museums that support open-source policy:
It is no surprise that the more well-known museums have tighter regulations regarding their images’ copy right. However, after doing some research, I came to the realization that there are certain museums that support open source (The Metropolitan Museum is one such museum). This means that images of artworks can be used unrestrictedly at no cost in the public domain in accordance with the Creative Commons Zero (CC0). Thus, I will only include museums that support the open-source policy, with the exception of museums that falls into the category of my second solution.
2. Collaborate with budding galleries/museums that would like free publicity:
Galleries and smaller-scale museums who are in want of free publicity are more likely willing to grant permission to use their images. An example is Project Pangée, a gallery-favorite of mine located in Montreal. I will contact each gallery/museum that falls under this category and ask for permission to use their images.
Conclusion
The MUSEUM app is a fully developed and executed app. The only thing that is preventing its launch is the huge fee associated with copy right, this needs to be dealt with first and foremost. Once resolved, the next step would be to develop features that encourages user engagement and increase museum database. Monetization of the app is another thing to think about.
