Mona: A museum collections management platform for repatriation, collaboration, and context-driven taxonomy.
Google UX x Design@Columbia Design Sprint, Spring 2024
My Role
Product Manager & UX Designer.
Mona was introduced as part of the Spring 2024 Google UX x Design@Columbia Design Sprint.
Skills
- Ethnographic Study/Interviews
- Rapid Prototyping
- UX/UI Design
- Human-Centered Design
Software
- Figma
- Miro
Project Deliverables
- Novel product designed “to preserve NYC culture”
- Integrated Google technology
- LoFi and HiFi Prototypes
Team
- Matt Labasan
- Nick Lam
- Sanjana Subramanian
- Wenjun Yang
Project Overview
Museums are strongholds for community building and extracurricular education.
Museum audiences are extremely diverse–it’s vital that what we experience in museums and on their websites reflects that diversity.
Mona is a cloud-based museum collections software that implements an accessible price model, an intuitive UI, and equity-driven features emphasizing repatriation, collaboration, and context-driven taxonomy.
Current Solution
The Museum System ™️ is an out-of-date collections management tool that limits accessibility and representation in museum curation.
From ethnographic interviews and problem space research, we learned the following:
Exorbitant, non-transparent prices limit access to large, wealthy institutions.
Pay-per-download model limits remote work and size of curation team
No repatriation workflow
Collaboration is only possible between institutions both using TMS.
UI is not intuitive
User Interviews
Collections management software has two major market groups: academics and museum curators. We held ethnographic interviews with both groups to determine the following market needs:
Streamlined repatriation process
External-platform-compatible collaboration
Cloud-based storage
Institution-level pay-per-account model
Contextual search and metadata search
Key Features
Context-Driven Taxonomy
Standard metadata searches (”artist”, “year”)
Chat-like UX that feels like interacting with a librarian
Object search by subject matter
Object search by secondary or primary source
Comprehensive global database of all objects for research
Repatriation & Collaboration
“I want” or “I have” museum can initiate repatriation
Pay-per-account pricing
Affordability avoids creating custom systems during repatriation projects
Inter-software compatibility facilitating inter-museum collaboration
Easily request and offer pieces for exhibits
Comprehensive global database of all objects for curation
Search Workflow & Wireframes
Curation/Repatriation Workflow & Wireframes