Building on 150+ years of engaging audiences, I worked on revamping the exhibitions page to help improve visitor expectations of what to see in the galleries. I joined The Met's product team as a fellow.
ROLE
DURATION
8 months
TOOLS
Figma, Usertesting, Excel, Word
TEAM
the problem
The Met's website doesn't currently have a page where users can find everything they can visit in the galleries at a given time. The "Exhibitions" page is separate from "The Met Collection", which can be frustrating for potential visitors. It's hard to know what to see.
This is made more difficult by the following:
Information overload with 1.5 million objects
For comparison, that's 8x the MoMA collection (200,000 objects) and 60x the Whitney collection (25,000 objects). It's a lot to search through.
Competition for exposure between departments
The Met has 19 curatorial departments with more exhibitions than any art museum in the world (aka: over 30 exhibitions each year). Everyone wants to be seen, understandably!
Confusing page aesthetics and content hierarchy
Minimal/no spacing between cards, lack of a focal point, unclear content hierarchy, and a lack of in-demand permanent collection information.
our solution
EXHIBITIONS REDESIGN
A dedicated page to give users a solid overview of all that's viewable in The Met's galleries
Now, we don't mean EVERYTHING everything. We wanted a decent entry point for visitors to explore their interests. One with clear content hierarchy and updated aesthetics so they can comfortably navigate through what's on view.
the analysis
We wanted to examine the current state of the exhibitions page and how it could be improved by comparing it to other museums.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS PAGE
We broke down what needed improving for the design
Problems included no spacing between the cards, hierarchy with color (dark) that wasn't necessary, no titles separating the sections of different importance, and minimal information indicating that anything was from the permanent collection.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
How are other museums handling their exhibitions?
While few museums have a collection at the scale of The Met, we still conducted a competitive analysis to figure out how other museums organized their exhibitions.
Best finding: the title "In our galleries" to indicate that there's more to see than just exhibitions
VISUAL ANALYSIS
We broke down competitors' exhibitions pages visually
The page breakdown helped us find visual designs that could be adapted to The Met's design system.
For example, we looked into the Rijksmuseum, which had a handling similar to what we were aiming for: the integration of both exhibitions and the permanent collection to give visitors a better understanding of what they could see.
EARLY BRAINSTORMING
Introducing: issues with our first wireframes
Remember earlier how I said The Met has one of the biggest collections and exhibition outputs in the world? Well, we experienced this firsthand with our early wireframes. Many of the other museums’ design decisions couldn’t be applied to our site due to the sheer volume of The Met’s collection.
We realized we were too quick to jump on designs. More research was needed.
The scroll was so long that it would dominate most of this case study, so enjoy some alt visuals!
Issue #1: too much scrolling
Issue #2: information overload
Issue #3: imbalanced content
visitor research
We jumped into old-school research: approaching people in the galleries themselves. We wanted to know their values for what to see and figure out how these values aligned with the curators' goals.
UNDERSTANDING VISITORS
It was time to adventure into the galleries ourselves
We decided to interview visitors to better understand their values and impressions of The Met's site, exhibitions, and collection. While responses were hit or miss, we approached many people, from solo visitors to families to dates to friend groups.
We narrowed down some key questions we had that we would incorporate into our designs.
I walked over 30,000 steps in 2 days going around the museum talking to visitors
#1
How did visitors use The Met's site before their visit?
#2
Are visitors more interested in exhibitions or the permanent collection?
#3
Are visitors aware or interested in specific exhibition terminology (like "new rotation")?
INTERVIEW STATS
We gathered key insights for our new exhibitions page
The site was used by the majority of visitors before their visit. Plus, we were validated in wanting to include more information on the permanent collection within the exhibitions page. Visitors were also curious about knowing the distinction between types of exhibitions/displays.
60% of visitors spent time browsing The Met's site before their visit
67% of visitors were more interested in the permanent collection instead of exhibitions
83% of visitors believed that knowing exhibition terminology would improve their in-gallery experiences
prototyping & testing
We worked under The Met's product team to put together a prototype that followed their design guidelines while also meeting the needs of both users and curators.
DESIGNING THE PROTOTYPE
A new content structure for exhibitions and collections
A major change was the division of art displays into time, giving unifying language across different display types. "Always at The Met" = art that's from the permanent collection. "Limited Time Exhibitions" = temporary displays with an end date.
We also introduced carousels for content navigation. "Featured" gave us equal priority for exhibitions and the permanent collection, addressing the wants of both visitors and curators.
Added spacing between cards + information was a key visual change with our updated design
UNIQUE COMPONENTS
We leveraged The Met's design system
Our prototype used Marble, The Met's design system, to follow strict design guidelines.
We did build unique components, but these were designed to be compatible with the designers’ and developers’ existing systems, reducing time and resources. Aside from the large carousel, we also designed a card for highlighted exhibitions, which changes color on hover to bring more visual importance to visitors.
USER TESTING
We launched 13 tests on Usertesting.com
Both desktop and mobile were tested. We looked into the ease of navigation, discoverability, and information architecture of the web page.
We had an overwhelmingly positive response, with users saying that the page had everything they'd hope to see when discovering what's on view. Our goal was a success! But, there was still some adjusting to do.
+positives
#1. Quick understanding of header naming and what to expect under them
#2. Ease of finding specific content
#3. Appreciation for the "Featured" section since there was a focal point for what to see
-negatives
#1. Users wanted the ability to filter by date for their visit
#2. Users felt that The Met's locations filter wasn't visible enough below "Featured"
DESIGNING THE PROTOTYPE
Some adjustments went into our final prototype
These included the addition of a date selector where the original location picker was. We also moved the locations filter below the page title to increase its visibility and show that it applies to the full page, not just the limited time exhibitions.
Fun fact: many visitors don't realize The Met has two locations (and they're very far apart!)
Stakeholder negotiations opened design avenues we were initially barred from, allowing us to reduce the scroll while incorporating our signature elements of carousels and updated time-based categories.
FINAL DESIGN
The new page was launched at the end of the year ('24)
Following the conclusion of my fellowship, our design findings were passed to the Product team for final development. In this process, our carousel design was also approved for the full-page content (something we initially hit barriers with from competing content visibility between departments). This consolidated our card sizes to our primary and tertiary card designs.
Carousels also helped collapse tabs on the page, expanding and adapting our time-based naming system to structure the page: always at the met = ongoing, limited time = temporary, top priority exhibition cards = recently opened or closing soon.
Time-based page filters were a heavy lift for dev, so they are pending on a future release
FINAL THOUGHTS
My year at The Met was a truly wonderful experience
It was an amazing time and taught me valuable skills in UX design, balancing stakeholder needs, UX research, and effectively using design systems. And, of course, wandering the galleries each week when it’s closed to the public will be a treasured experience I will never forget!
