How might we make the Institute of Contemporary Art feel more welcoming to increase engagement with the community?
Client: Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia
Role: Designer & researcher on a team of four.
Tools used: Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator
Timeline: 10 weeks
The Challenge
Our team was approached by the ICA with the prompt:
“How might we make the ICA more welcoming? What other activities can it support? How might the space bring people together in new and interesting ways?”
Research & Interviews
Because our initial prompt was very broad, we widened our lens and took a four-pronged approach to interviews:
Penn Students
To see how members of the Penn community perceive the ICA
Philly Artists
To see how the greater Philly art community perceives the ICA
People Outside ICA
To gauge awareness of the ICA from people hanging nearby the space
Guests in the ICA
To understand how guests feel about the current experience
We conducted a combination of intercept interviews and formal interviews, speaking to a total of 18 people. We also set up whiteboard polls with 30+ respondents. Our goal was not only to understand how these various segments related to & experienced the ICA, but also to identify opportunities for engagement.
We identified three pain points:
1. Sense of Belonging
People without prior knowledge of art feel like they don’t belong in the ICA, which keeps them from opening the door
2. The Front Desk
The front desk asks guests many questions for data collection purposes, but this can feel overwhelming and unwelcoming, deterring repeat visits
3. The Lobby
The current design of the lobby is cold and even intimidating for guests. Guests don’t feel agency to explore or enjoy the space.
To ideate on these, we held a co-design session with the ICA leadership team. Together we generated multiple ideas per pain point, and then scored each one on feasibility, viability, and desirability.
The ideas that had a highest combined score moved forward into the prototyping phase.
Sense of Belonging
“I don’t know if I would go to the ICA, I’m a chemist”
— Penn Student
How might we help people with no prior knowledge of art feel welcome enough to open the door?
From the results of our co-design session, we decided to tackle this problem with signage outside and around the ICA.
It gathered 11 unique scans in the first two days, a high number considering the cold weather and finals week taking place at Penn.
QR Code Stickers
We prototyped these stickers to engage nearby visitors who may not be aware of the ICA at all, and placed them on a group of public tables just across the street.
A scan of the QR code takes you to a page that outlines everything the ICA has to offer.
Moving forward, we would like to measure how many of these scans lead to actual visits, and evolve the stickers’ messaging to match ICA’s changing exhibits.
A-Frame Sign
We then mocked up an A-frame sign to engage visitors who may feel disconnected from art and thus, the ICA.
We began with five rough designs and asked six people for feedback, testing for how engaging, inviting and activating each design was. The highest scoring design was mocked up for the ICA team.
Moving forward, we would like to get a physical sign up by the ICA entrance and measure how many visits it leads to.
2. The Front Desk
"If I came semi-frequently, it would feel tedious to have to talk to front desk every time I come in"
— ICA guest
How might we reimagine the front desk’s data collection process to be more inviting?
Because the ICA is required to collect visitor data for grants, the front desk experience can feel a bit like an interrogation. Guests are asked a long series of questions, ranging from their zip code to what classes they may be taking.
Many have reported that this deters them from future visits and contributes to feeling unwelcome.
The ICA Card
We decided to prototype an ICA card that guests would receive after answering the data collection questions on their first visit.
Then, if they come again, they can just swipe their card instead of having to answer questions multiple times.
Not only would this simplify the front desk experience, but it also partly tackles the first issue of belonging by acting as a sort of pseudo-membership card.
Prototyping Session
At this session, we tested out both physical and digital versions of the ICA card by handing them to guests after they spoke with visitor services, and asking them to scan in with it next time.
In interviews with guests who tested the card we learned that people do feel it solves the welcoming problem, but only if they were returning to the museum multiple times during the same exhibition.
3. The Lobby
“In that space, you do shrink a bit and want to remain a bit quieter”
— ICA Guest
How might we re-design the lobby to give guests more agency and encourage repeat visits?
Many guests only come when there is a new exhibit, which is only a few times a year.
We needed to give them a reason to come back for something other than the exhibit, and we looked at the lobby space for that.
Currently, people feel that the lobby is uninviting and even intimidating. How can we change that?
Moodboard Exercise with ICA Team
We first did a mood board exercise with the ICA team, where we put up 30 pictures and asked the team to leave post-its of what they liked and disliked about these images.
Our goals with this were:
To find the edges of design features that are resonant with the ICA team.
To identify ideas or levers for helping to address the barriers that keep people from feeling welcome and engaged in the lobby.
Public Polling through Instagram
We furthered filtered down ICA’s design preferences by turning to the public and asking what they thought. We did this through a series of IG polls, totalling over 500 respondents.
Surprisingly, most of their feelings about features we were testing were quite neutral. There was, however, still a common trend— people liked spaces with clear value propositions.
Lobby Design Criteria
Our next step was to consider both of these perspectives and find the overlap between what the public and what the ICA wanted. We gave the ICA team a set of design criteria that they could look to as they moved forward in redesigning their lobby.
1. Give people clarity about the rules and norms of the space.
For example, if you want people to work there, you should have wifi password signs and outlets on the tables to send that signal.
2. Make the space multi-functional
Through our research, we found that people have many different ideas of how to make the space their own. So there are many levers to consider playing with: indoor/outdoor, seasonal changes, renting out the space, etc.
3. Actively respect the museum experience
The mission of the ICA is to connect people with diverse perspectives in the art world. So, any activities that the lobby supports should not detract from that experience.
