Smithsonian Institution 3D Voyager

Interaction Design
2023
Collaborators: Ben Decker, Lexi Fogel, Arjan Guglani

The Smithsonian Institution’s Digitization Program Office preserves the museum’s collections digitally through their platform, the 3D Voyager. With more than 157 million unique artifacts and specimens, the team is faced with an ambitious challenge to 3D scan as many as they can. While the Smithsonian’s DPO is busy developing strategies for efficient 3D digitization, they approached my team and I at the University of Michigan to improve the usability of the Voyager, the current interface displaying these scans.

Through months of conducting usability tests and interviewing researchers and educators, we redesigned the platform with the goal of increasing its accessibility and perceived ease of use. We were satisfied to see that our version resulted in a 34% decrease in average time to complete core functions of the tool. My team and I hope that this consultation will be used to drive the Voyager forward in becoming a user-friendly platform where the public can learn from the remaining 99% of the Smithsonian’s vast collection that remains undisplayed.

The Tour Feature

The Tour feature shows great potential, particularly within the realm of education. However, it currently grapples with usability issues that hinder users from full engagement. Upon initiating the Tour, users often find themselves overwhelmed by an abundance of information, preventing them from absorbing the wealth of content this feature has to offer. Consequently, many users tend to disengage before fully benefiting from the extensive educational experience that the Tours feature provides.

In our final prototype, we helped users connect the information they were presented with by adding numbers to each Tour step that correlates with the referenced object. We also increased the touch targets of the back and forward button, giving full visibility of the user's autonomy when going through the Tour. We produced an interface that makes the Tour content pop front and center as well as easy to control and use.

Enhanced Guided Experience

The absence of clear user guidance is the overarching concern that contributes to the underutilization of Tours. Key components like tab menus and certain customization options lack adequate descriptions, leaving many users to resort to trial and error for familiarization. Consequently, some of the more intricate, yet insightful features remain underutilized, as there is either no documentation or insufficient guidance available to instruct users on how to use them effectively.

In direct response from our iterative user testing, we added verbal descriptions to any features that required specific actions. While some tools and features of the Voyager are made to be 'intuitive', it was clear through our research that most were not. Instead of adding a large how-to or information section onto the platform, we decided to guide users throughout the tools and features that they encounter through brief, directive captions.

Reorganized Navigation

Due to the way tools and features were presented, many study participants found it very frustrating to effectively use them. Thus, having these extremely unique and immersive action items added system complexity with very little output value.

We made the features and tools on the Voyager more descriptive with thorough text labels, easy to understand manipulator options, and a pinned menu system on the bottom-left corner. Through reorganizing how we presented the tools, we insinuated that these extras were here not for a greater purpose, but to examine the object through various perspectives. We added a breadcrumb menu to make it difficult for the user to get lost within the interface, and gave them the power to find their way back to any previous pages. Additionally, we included a reset button at the top right with redo and undo options.

Verbose Iconography with Tooltips

Many participants expressed confusion when we asked them to predict what each tab on the menu does. We determined that it is unclear that the globe indicates tours and that the chat bubble icon indicates annotations. These ambiguous icons should either be supplemented with captions or replaced with something more specific.

We completely redesigned all the buttons and replaced iconography with ones that users resonated with more. We also increased the touchpoint sizes of our buttons since the original area was too small to be accessed. In addition to clearer icons, we added a hover state where the name of each feature is explicitly labeled. This way, the user will always be aware of what they will be clicking into before accessing a new feature. Through this, we were able to keep the iconography as minimal yet as clear to the user as possible.

CHRISTINE PAK