Product Design & Research
J. Paul Getty Trust
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Design System
Site-Wide Search
Art Enthusiast Audience Research
Design System
To maintain and evolve an atomic design library of components in Figma, representing a new design system for the redesigned website. And to apply this design system to new sections of Getty.edu.
Responsibilities
- Figma design library stewardship
- Design-ops management including admin of organization’s Figma account, and UserTesting enterprise account
Design system
The design system is based on atomic design methodology. The Figma library is composed of a series of foundational elements, atoms, molecules, organisms; building blocks to create a system that’s flexible but also very reusable and consistent.
I worked closely with the A17 design agency to develop the library itself, as well as a guide for applying the system and taking advantage of the flexibility it affords. We also created the library in a way to foster parity between design and code, for example, by using a relative instead of fixed grid to reflect CSS in the final product.
How I’ve applied the design system
I’ve designed pages and experiences throughout the website, such as site-wide search featured below, and have collaborated on the design of every redesigned section such as getty.edu/visit, getty.edu/about.
I’ve also created high impact, highly viewed pages such as the homepage, and other digital touchpoints such as the ticketing site.
Site-Wide Search
To improve findability on Getty.edu by redesigning the way people can search through Getty’s vast array of content.
Responsibilities
- Conduct discovery research
- Design new site-search experience
Design Process
Inspired by the double diamond framework, we redesigned sitewide by using divergent thinking and exploring the problem space from multiple approaches, then converging on a defined problem, which I addressed through the re-design, visible on getty.edu/search.
To start the project, I conducted stakeholder interviews across Getty, conducted a usability test with external users, and performed an in-depth search analysis of our search data.
Search Analysis
I looked at search data across two years: nearly 150,000 unique searches, starting from the beginning of the getty.edu redesign project.
I restricted the data to the top 250 terms, representing 19,476 unique searches since the beginning of the website redesign. The 250th most searched term had only 31 unique searches, indicating a long-tail of highly specific art terms.
I reviewed the terms with the highest percentage of search exits, meaning the user left the results page without clicking anything (indicative of the results not meeting their needs), and learned most of these terms related to internal tools )e.g. the e-appraisal system, or slack).
I cleaned the data by consolidating differences due to synonyms, pluralization, and case sensitivity.
Interview Findings
Through talking with stakeholders and listening to external users, we identified two pain points:
1.) The search was lacking context, and didn’t indicate what it searches, what it doesn’t search, nor provide indications of other search tools & databases such as the museum collection.
2.) The search results page didn’t return what users expect, and didn’t give context or hierarchy to the results.
As shown below, an interstitial page provided little context for the search (left) and results for the “shop” query displaying historic hat shops and curio shops, but not the Getty gift shop (right).
After converging on and defining a definition of the problem, I iterated through five rounds of design from low-fidelity wireframes to high-fidelity responsive designs.
I removed the blue interstitial, and explored ways to provide more context to the search, as well as pathways to our other search tools & databases.
I considered how to best display images, especially ones with unique aspect ratios and rights issues.
I designed “top cards”, to provide a custom initial search result for nearly 100 of getty.edu’s most frequently searched terms deemed to have unambiguous search intent.
The “top cards” are a strong hierarchical element to bypass the programmatic search results and quickly deliver helpful information.
Try it out: getty.edu/search
Example Design Comp
This is the high fidelity design at the large breakpoint for the final getty.edu site-wide search redesign.
Art Enthusiast Research
To better understand the mindset, motivations, and behaviors of a primary audience. Across Getty, leadership and staff have expressed a desire to reach, engage and serve an audience of Art Enthusiasts.
Responsibilities
- Conduct & analyze survey
- Create proto-persona
- Moderate 20 interviews
- Synthesize interview data, present findings to large group of stakeholders across the institution
What is an “Art Enthusiast”?
We asked a cohort of Getty employees across the museum, research, and conservation institute just that.
By conducting an internal survey and developing a proto-persona we were able to understand, in our own words, what an “Art Enthusiast” is, what they are not, and what our institutional goals are for this audience.
The proto-persona and initial staff survey led to institutional alignment and revealed the nuance audience.
Interviewing Art Enthusiasts and applying the jobs-to-be-done framework
I moderated interviews with users, focusing on speaking with people who had recently decided to interact with art online. The recent “switch event” helps the user to more easily reflect on their motivations, mindset, and other products, services, or experiences they may have “hired” prior to “hiring” Getty, and for what “jobs”.
Findings
We pulled quotes and used inductive coding to uncover themes from my conversations, leading to further. segmentation. of the “Art Enthusiast” into different mindsets, and moods, as well as identifying trends in jobs-to-be-done within these different modes.
Impact
This research helped gain better alignment and understanding of one of. Getty’s primary audiences. Because of this research, the jobs-to-be-done framework is used across the institution when referring to various user groups and how Getty may better serve them.
As part of this research we sought to understand barriers to entry, opportunities for us to foster a sense of belonging, as well as our own biases and assumptions. Expanding reach with “Art Enthusiasts” goes hand in hand with diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.
Full report available upon request, preview below: