Vancouver Mural Festival Classroom Kit, a mural-inspired art lesson planning kit

Designing an alternative to the current Vancouver Mural Festival mural walking tour that would increase accessibility and inclusivity of people not already in the mural art community.

Role

Vancouver Mural Festival Classroom Kit instruction booklet, lesson cards and mural passport

Problem Statement

One of our client’s services was a private mural walking tour. However, due to lack of resources, it was under-developed in its current form. Initial observations found:

  1. Information about the tour was only in a small section on one page of the website.
  2. There was only one permanent tour guide who was responsible for facilitating the tours and training other volunteer tour guides.

Since this was one of their only year-round activities, there was both a need and an opportunity to leverage the tours to retain interest in the murals outside of the annual Mural Festival.

Ethnographic Research

My team went on a walking tour to get a first-hand experience of what the tours were like. We accompanied a group of tour attendees, which allowed us to observe their reactions as the tour unfolded. I took photos to document any pain points we noticed along the way, for analysis once we were back in the studio.

People looking at mural in an alley People walking uphill in an alley

Pain Points

  1. Some murals were viewed at large distances, near streets with busy traffic, which made it difficult to hear.
  2. Murals set in alleyways meant that attendees had to stand in the middle of a road to view it.
  3. The walking tour moved as a group, so everyone had to keep the same pace.

Journey Map + Persona

Using observations from our first-hand research, and information from client interviews and operations, we created a journey map and three personas to get a holistic view of the design problem and opportunities. I primarily worked on the stakeholder persona (tour guide), using information from our tour ethnography and client interviews.

Mural walking tour journey framework Persona of tour guide

Key Frustrations

The 90-minute walking tour was not accessible to all audiences, and was overwhelming due to the length and amount of information provided. As the goal of our client was to foster the mural art community in the area, it was important that the murals be made more accessible. A bonus would be to leverage the year-round walking tour to increase attendance rates for the annual mural festival.

Rapid Prototyping

After doing a 3-day design sprint, we created three fleshed out initial proposals with the goal of providing a more accessible alternative to the walking tour to a wider audience. I worked on “Mural Hunt”, an app that gamified the mural viewing experience to attract younger audiences and provided incentives like redeemable prizes to bridge the gap between the tour and the festival.

Photo of Mural Hunt sketch from design sprint

Client Check-In

Using our quick prototypes as the basis for our co-creation workshop, we engaged our client in ideation activities to uncover more of our client's long-term goals and values, as well as identify some audiences our clients wanted to engage with.

Photo of completed posterboard for graffiti wall activity
Photo of completed posterboard for H-forms activity

How might we engage young students with murals through existing channels? How might we turn students into advocates for murals and art?

Finding An Opportunity

We found an opportunity to engage with our client's goals through designing for educational systems, since they aligned perfectly with the BC Ministry of Education goals for arts education in schools:

“Pursue a lifelong interest in the arts and gain the confidence to create and contribute to the local/national/global art community as an individual and/or group.”

This supported our client's long-term goal of increasing mural literacy and awareness in the city, while also building new relationships in the education sector.

Final Proposal

A mural-inspired art lesson kit for BC grades 6 and 7 classrooms, including art lesson planning cards for teachers, mural passports for students, and mural stickers. Each kit comes with an instructions booklet introducing the kit items in a friendly and supportive tone. Our visual design was inspired by the organization's website visuals, where the vibrant colours of the mural art was contrasted with black and white interactive elements.

Vancouver Mural Festival Classroom Kit instruction booklet, lesson cards and mural passport

User Testing

Conducting user tests with teachers and teacher candidates allowed us to gauge the feasibility and usefulness of our prototypes. Afterwards, we used affinity diagramming to organize the feedback based on priority, allowing us to manage our time efficiently to deliver a high quality prototype by our deadline.

Picture of me and teammate organizing user testing feedback on a whiteboard

Supportive, Not Directive

A key point brought up in user testing was an emphasis that the copy in the kit should be descriptive and conversational rather than directive, giving teachers more flexibility in adapting the lessons to their class's specific needs. Additionally, though our friendly one-liners on each spread was well-received, teachers were more interested in what benefits the kit could offer.

Side by side comparison of instructions booklet before and after user testing

Balancing Fun With Educational

Our initial prototype had a large stamp area for students to prove they went to the murals by receiving a stamp from nearby stores. This interaction was impractical for two reasons: store hours may not align with mural visits and large numbers of visitors may interfere with store operations. We replaced the large stamp area with discussion questions to encourage critical thinking, which was a major goal of the BC curriculum.

Side by side comparison of mural passport before and after user testing

Familiar Language

Art lesson activity cards were included to support teachers who may not necessarily have an arts background. Each lesson card has a border at the top, colour-coded to a “Big Idea” written at the top of each card, allowing for easy sorting. The "Big Idea" and "Curricular Competencies" copy is taken straight from the BC curriculum in order to relate the ideas behind the lessons to teachers in terms they would already be familiar with.

Hand holding 4 lesson planning cards

Reflection

This was a heavily research-driven project, as our brief was to find a client and identify an opportunity to improve their operations through interaction design and user research. I learned about both user research and co-design methods, and how to extract actionable insights from these activities. This was a key experience that has influenced my current research-driven approach to design.

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