My team for this project was highly collaborative, so I had a hand in every stage of the design process—Discovery, Ideation, Wireframing, User Testing, and Prototyping.
Pencil & paper, whiteboard, sticky notes, Figma
10 weeks
The Gates Discovery Center is a free interactive museum that highlights the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a philanthropic organization fighting to improve people’s health and end poverty.
Visitors were ignoring the museum’s pen-and-paper guestbook because it was difficult to find. When visitors did use the guestbook, the pages wound up in the garbage. As a result, the Discovery Center had no way to follow up with visitors to their museum.
Captures visitor comments and feedback
Encourages visitors to sign up for the Gates Foundation Newsletter
1. Engaging experience
2. Gathers visitor feedback
3. Integrates with Salesforce
4. Accessible, family-friendly
5. GDPR compliant
And how can we get them to use this one? I worked with two of my team members to develop three hypotheses.
Some visitors feel a personal connection to the people and projects featured in the Discovery Center.
The museum doesn’t offer visitors a way to communicate with the Gates Foundation Changemakers working on projects visitors feel connected to.
Visitors interested in communicating with Changemakers are more likely to sign up for the Gates Foundation Newsletter.
We began by sorting old guestbook entries into categories. I found that visitors expressed four sentiments in their entries:
I was Here
I was Moved
I was Inspired
I have Feedback.
I developed a persona for each of the four sentiments. I discovered that the “Moved” and “Inspired” personas felt personally connected to the people and projects they learned about in the museum.
The team conducted an audit of the interactive exhibits in the museum revealed there was no opportunity for visitors to connect with Changemakers. Visitors could share their stories with the Gates Foundation, or with other visitors, but had no way to communicate directly with Changemakers.
I conducted in-person interviews with visitors at the museum. I asked they had interest in communicating with Changemakers. With 1 being Not Interested and 5 being Very Interested, the average response was 3.75 out of 5. I also asked about visitor interest in receiving follow-up communications from the Gates Foundation. We discovered a strong correlation between visitors answers.
We’re designing for visitors who feel a personal connection to the people and projects featured in the Discovery Center.
These visitors don’t have a way to communicate their feelings to Changemakers.
Visitors interested in communicating with Changemakers are likely to sign up for the Gates Foundation Newsletter.
Below are the questions I asked and the process I used to come up with the solution.
A postcard contains a short, personal message. It’s handwritten, and sent to someone important to the sender. Receiving a postcard is meaningful and memorable. It seemed like a perfect fit.
Physical postcards were interesting in theory, but the scope was too big. We needed a more practical solution.
Digital messages are waste free. Interfaces allow for interesting visuals and can be easily translated for international visitors. Newsletter sign up would be just a tap away.
Prompts visitors to write a personal message to one of six pre-selected Changemakers.
Encourages visitors to sign up for the Gates Foundation newsletter.
We made a few changes, decided on the most important things to test, and finalized the flow.
Creating wireframes in a shared Figma file allowed for rapid iteration and the ability to see each other’s work immediately as we neared the midway point of our 10-week schedule.
A horizontal orientation wouldn’t leave space for an onscreen keyboard, so we moved to a vertical orientation. Now that our first iteration was complete, we were ready to test it.
