Art Institute of Chicago
The renowned Art Institute of Chicago had an existing iPhone app that provided museum patrons with extensive artwork searching, guided audio tours and way-finding powered by indoor mapping. After the success of their iOS app, they needed to extend support to Android devices. They knew the functionality and back-end needed to remain the same for both apps, but wanted to ensure the new app felt at home on the Android platform.
I was the sole designer responsible for updating the user experience and visuals to feel at home with Android’s Material Design. I worked with agency developers to handoff assets.
Ben Masanga, Product Manager
Paul Sieka, Creative Director
Andrew Grosner, Developer
The home screen is the gateway into the app, featuring avenues into guided tours, artworks on view and events throughout the muesum. To align the app to Android’s Material Design, the Bottom Navigation went from a black bar to white, and a single-colored App Bar pattern was used for page titling.
Guided tours use indoor mapping powered by Google Maps to provide a virtual guided tour complete with audio commentary and detailed artwork information.
Search is an integral part of the experience and allows for searching across artworks, guided audio tours and current exhibitions. To align to Material Design, the search experience uses the App Bar for searching input and a full screen card for displaying result details. The overall dark theme was carried over from iOS.
