ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST CATHEDRAL
Improving the visitor experience at St. John the Baptists Cathedral in Norwich,focusing on drawing in new visitors to share their message of “All are Welcome”
STARTING THE PROJECT
Within the projects starting days, I began by analysing the brief and writing down the induvidual goals and roacblocks that i would encountter within the project.
Planning ahead like this ennsured that i would stay within the guidelines and create a final result suitable for the clients brief.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
In order to understand better what the current issues with the Cathedrals online presence was, I conducted analysis of the existing site with a heuristic markup. During this time, I also compared it to other Cathedral sites.
empty, unused space
Lack of icons
uneven alignment
confusing categories
lack of colour
need better highlights on USPs
RESEARCH SURVEY
To create a design that would be accessible to those at the Cathedral, I first needed to understand the target audience.
My method for doing so was to conduct a survey for visitors to answer.
Creating an effective survey require some research however, which led me to come to the conclusion that it would be far more effective to present these surveys in a paper format, as the question count was low and accessibility was a high priority; accommodating older visitors.
Since many questions were about technological subjects, it was important to make sure those less knowledgeable about tech were able to answer in order to prevent any bias.
The results of the survey helped confirm the details of the target audience the product was designed for, providing details such as age range, Catholic percent and visit frequency. Some of the more important details were also asked, such as reasons for visiting, technical knowledge, phone capabilities and donation method preference. This data was important for allowing me to accommodate the current visitors within the design, sharing the highlights of the Cathedral with a new audience while not isolating the existing one.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
Early design ideas for the project included a lot of focus on a virtual form of the Cathedrals popular tours, to be used alongside the in-person ones for additional info.
This led into a research and discussion on augmented reality (AR) technology and its possible use cases for the general public.
THE AR PROBLEM
The intent was to utilise augmented reality to identify elements of the Cathedral through the phones camera, and showcase information and high-res close imagery as they were being talked about by a guide. This was later discovered to be an issue as the technology for this was still very experimental and unreliable, especially so for small details at varying angles.
Current usage of AR was best used in other Cathedrals such as the nearby Norwich Cathedral, which utilised AR as a method for online-only self-guided tours and maps of the building, which was the inspiration for later developments.
A TIGHTER FOCUS
The designs later developed further into something with a tighter focus, as the use of AR caused technical limitations where image recognition was difficult to utilise, and the use of supplementing a tour guide providing little addition.
This led to the design focusing on a solo experience, allowing users to browse the cathedral as they please, with a few options for different preferences.
These options included a map for a free-form experience, a selection of categories for information on select themes, and an organised page of all pages under the collection tab
USER TESTING
In order to develop and refine the designs further, I made full utilisation of group crit reviews within he UX studio and other students.
In addition to this however, I created a functioning prototype of one flow within the webapp that was tested within the Cathedrals Narthex cafe on visitors to discover the strengths and flaws within it.
The test proved successful with all tested showing excitement at the concept and an easy understanding od the systems.
TESTING FOLLOWUP
Although the response from user testing was overall very positive, there were some flaws and areas of confusion for users which were iterated upon. These included a difficulty reading the text for some users and minor confusion from the use of “Themes” as a tab , which included the need for larger text, sections within details, and a rewording of the “Themes” tab to something clearer and more widely used such as “Categories”.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Once the final stages of the project concluded and a presentation was given to the client from the Cathedral, it was handed over to other professional UX staff within the university for the project to be taken further utilising the designs and research conducted by myself and other students on the project.
In Conclusion, this project provided me with the excellent opportunity to work individually with a local client, helping to develop important communication skills for presenting a product and idea.
The access to contact the client for relevant information throughout development of the project, including the opportunity for a presentation allowed me to further refine the relevant skills and provided a vital experience for my UX career.
