Montreal MURAL Festival App

Context

Since 2013, Montreal's MURAL festival has been celebrating the urban art movement with live art, music, exhibitions and artist talks. The festival is an eleven day gathering of the global artistic community where world class musicians and visual artists collaborate for a cultural celebration in the heart of Montreal on the Saint-Laurent Boulevard.

The Challenge

To enhance the MURAL festival experience with a robust application that follows best UX practices, contains the latest digital technology, and brings attention to the murals and live events of Montreal’s MURAL festival.

What I did

Stakeholder interview
Competitor Analysis
Information Architecture
Low-fidelity prototypes
Wireframes
High-fidelity design

Define

What is the App about?

MURAL festival’s app was introduced in 2019 to accompany festival goers with the latest program information, locating murals throughout Montreal, and guiding users on a self guided audio tour along the Saint-Laurent Boulevard.

What are the goals of the App?

Encourage users to continue using the app throughout the year, especially after the festival.
Ability for users and festival goers to interact with MURAL projects through their phones, without having to be present at the festival (Covid-19)
Allow the public to discover the art of MURAL around Montreal
Allow users to enjoy Montreal’s murals regardless of their location

Who are the users of the app?

General public
Art & urban art lovers
MURAL festival attendees

Stakeholder Interview

The app delivery/launch was based on the festival dates of August 12-22, 2021, which meant a 4 month project timeline. Stakeholder interviews were conducted to prioritize need and nice to haves. The needs formed the basis of the product MVP.

Contain the festival program / schedule
Access festival event tickets
Geo-localisations of the murals, events, and augmented reality
App technology available on both iOS and Android
Augmented reality capability for interactive art
Ability for users to create self guided tours of the murals around Montreal
Enhance the existing MURAL app audio tour
Include links to MURAL’s social media
Ability to switch from French to English
App advertising, mural sponsorship integration, and festival partner information
Revamp and launch a new visual design inspired by MURAL’s a creative brief (with the ability for the app to be “themed” using the work of a chosen artist).

Discover

UX Review

User pain points were identified from qualitative (stakeholder interview), quantitative (App store review) and a design review of the existing app which I conducted in the Discovery phase. The following pain points were identified:

Slow app loading due to outdated and limiting technology
No bearing of the user’s location in the guided tour
Not able to see the artists bio
Not able to view events and access tickets
App map did not rest on Montreal and its murals but located the user's location. This for example could be overseas or far away from Montreal and the festival.

Competitor Analysis

Following the establishment of requirements for the new festival app, I continued the discovery phase with research into existing examples and competitors. The examples and competitors I studied included:

Google Arts & Culture App
Montreux Jazz Festival Insider App
TIFF App
Expedia App

The findings were used to compare against the existing application to provided direction for enhancements.

Information Architecture

Through an iterative process, I refined and improved the existing RFP’s IA using the research findings, wireframes, and low-fidelity prototype. The IA enhancements included:

Instead of the festival being a section within the app, the festival home becomes the app’s home.
The home of the app “highlights” artists, murals and live events for each current festival year by allowing admins to tag items from the festival’s database.
The festival database is represented by the “Mural Map” stack of the app, which contains all live events, murals and augmented reality installations.
I designed the app navigation using a combination of sidebar menu and footer navigation. The footer nav reflects the app stacks, whereas the sidebar allows the user to jump to primary app locations.
The guided tours and saved tours functionalities were repositioned under the festival home after I identified the logic of the data could not work if it was positioned under the user account stack.