Curating visual content strengthens user experience when securing MET Ticket
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) houses over 2 million works of art, making it the largest and finest art museum in the United States. In tandem with Pratt's Information Experience Design Students (IxD), the MET is committed to conserving quality through their digital experiences and usability to visitors.
Eye-tracking technology was used in this study to visually explain how visitors navigate through planning their visit and securing a ticket. From the data collected by this method, we understood what visual elements stood out to users and what content they were looking for as they navigated through the process of planning their visit. After thorough research and analysis, our team curated recommendations and designed more suitable visual elements that we hope would ease the process for visitors who wish to plan their trip to the MET.
Our Team - Amiee Shi, Amiya Dewan, Danielle Kingberg, & Victor Chien
My Role - UX Designer / Researcher with responsibilities of: moderating eye-tracking study, analyzing / organizing findings, designing deliverables, delivering presentation to clients
Year - 2021
Our Client - https://www.metmuseum.org/
Recommendations
1
Add exhibitions icons in the Location during the ticket purchase process so that users will no longer have to rely on recall and memory to select their location.
2
Add each MET location's within the "Exhibitions and Events"tab displayed on the top nav.
Users expressed confusion over the purpose of "Plan Your Visit" page
However, eye-tracking did reveal some friction points
Our goals were to find
1 Where users look first
2 What information users seek out when planning their visit
3 Areas of friction when purchasing a ticket or reserving a time to visit
4 How users navigate the site to plan their visit
What is eye tracking?
Eye tracking is a methodology that allows us to
understand an individual's visual attention. Eye tracking involves using a device called an eye tracker which is a tool that allows us to observe an individuals visual behavior.
What we used it for:
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To understand what elements on a page users look at first
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To find out how users navigate to ticketing
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To understand what a user's overall navigation preference
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To discover a user's experience with existing ticketing categories
Metrics used:
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TOI (Times of interest)
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Events
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Heatmaps
Eye tracking was our method
Our process involved many tools
Our participants
10 participants were recruited for our eye-tracking study. Each participant was screened for vision impairments before selection to ensure that we would retrieve the most accurate recordings of a user's visual behavior. Those with visual impairments who required glasses or contact lenses were ineligible to participate in this study.
Limitation
Due to strict COVID regulations issued by Pratt we were limited in recruiting participants outside of the Institute.
User's look at moving picture and alert pop-up first
When asking participants to explore the Met's homepage, many users fixated on the moving picture first, followed by the COVID alert, then Navigation. Tobii heatmap shows that fixation is prominent on the alert because users will read COVID-related news due to relevancy.
01.
03.
Ticketing experience overall is positive
On average, it took participants 1.26 seconds to complete the ticketing process (up until checkout). When asked what they thought of the MET's ticketing, many participants unanimously said that "the ticketing process was simple."
Top navigation is still a favorable choice
100% of participants used the top navigation to take action. When asked to explore 40% automatically used top navigation while the remaining 60% scrolled down the homepage.
02.
Our initial findings were positive
Along with well-crafted tasks
When user's were completing their ticket purchase, many expressed confusion over which location to select and were forced to rely on their memory to remember which MET location the exhibition was located at.
Research from eye-tracking found that:
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70% confused on which location to select
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30% looked for the exhibition location
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One user expected the Cloisters location to have their own checkout experience
Users experienced confusion over location selection
Recommendations
1
Since most users look for the same information displayed on both "Plan Your Visit" and "Admission Tickets" pages, we recommend consolidating this information into one page.
Display pricing details for members, residents & students (NY, NJ, CT), and NY visitors, as a sticky box with an accordion dropdown. Doing so will maximize space on the page while keeping important information visible to visitors of the MET.
2
To reduce confusion between both button functions we suggest changing all "Plan Your Visit" CTA buttons to "Buy Tickets"
When user's were asked to navigate from the exhibition page and purchase a ticket to the MET, they all clicked into "Plan Your Visit." However, once users were on this page they were confused about its purpose.
Research from eye-tracking found that:
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All users clicked "Plan Your Visit" first
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Once on "Plan Your Visit," everyone eventually searches for "Buy Tickets"
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90% of participants clicked "Buy Tickets" from within "Plan Your Visit" page
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The "Plan Your Visit" page receives minimal interaction
Recommendations
1
To enhance the discoverability of additional ticketing information for students, we recommend adding a ticketing option for NY residents and NY, NJ, and CT students with a conditional box to allow users to pay what they wish > $.99
2
Enable a warning prompt to remind students and NY residents to bring a valid ID when entering the MET to avoid paying the full cost of admission.
Additional ticketing information is difficult for users to find
When going through the ticketing process, some participants expressed that they could not find ticketing information that allows students to donate an amount of their choosing.
"Why don’t they include a pay as you wish ticket on the page for students?"
Research from eye-tracking found that:
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Users try to locate additional ticketing information for complimentary tickets and "pay as you wish" tickets
What our clients had to say
"Eye-tracking is something we don't have access to so it was very interesting to see all of these findings"
"people finding difficulty in chunks of text or going back and forth between pages was super interesting to see"
"We are actually looking at the 'plan your visit' page right now so these findings were covered at a great time"
Photo of the MET taken by me
What we learned & what is next
Although the MET had a SUS score of 84.4 which translates to an excellent usability rating, eye tracking showed us that there are always improvements that can be made to make a user's journey easier.
We are honored to have worked with such a renowned museum in our very own city of New York and can't wait to see how they implement our findings. To add depth to our research in In the future, we believe that testing larger samples to compile more quantitative data will be helpful to the MET as they refine their navigational pathways.
