HueArts NYC
Art & Community | UX Design & Development
Sept 2021 - Feb 2022
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Listening Sessions
The purpose of the listening sessions was to listen, empathize, and gather ideas of the art organizations. Since the project was initiated by and for them, it only made sense to use these sessions to learn more.
HueArts NYC was a project that started with larger research questions:
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How can HueArts NYC support NYC-based arts and cultural entities that are founded and led by members of the global majority?
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How can HueArts NYC set up arts entities founded and led by Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, and all People of Color to thrive in the long term?
This was a mixed-methods approach including:
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Listening sessions with 10 leaders of NYC-based arts organizations
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Three community conversations (virtual and town hall)
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Survey to collect detailed quantitative and qualitative information.
Questions included: What art discipline does your organization focus on? What community do you primarily focus on? What percent of the programming is free?
Questions about the map and directory were included in one of the listening sessions with the leaders. Example questions:
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How would a directory help your organization?
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What would you look for in a map directory?
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Describe the mood of the directory would be like.
The City has chosen time and again to invest in white arts organizations providing them with property and opportunities. It has never [given] equal support to Native people.
Data today is currency. What I find in the advocacy work that we’re doing is our argument for how we’ve been marginalized or underinvested in—that is made so much clearer [with] the data… Once you see the data, you realize, in black and white, how starkly inequitable everything is.
I would like to see who I can partner with in the future. What events are around my neighborhood? What spaces do they provide?
Competitive Analysis
For the map and directory, I did a quick competitive analysis of different maps and directories that exist online. Two maps I knew of did not exactly focus on non-profits but businesses but were similar to what the team was looking for. Key parts of the map and directory I noticed was the buttons or links to the websites of the business/organization. Another important feature was the indication of the business category.
Making Sense of the Data
Survey Results
41 organizations responded to an extensive survey. Using the survey results, I put together a Tableau dashboard to help the team understand the responses to the survey. I categorized the information by general background, programming, and budget. The image on the right shows part of the information.
Card Sorting
For the map & directory specifically, I used a card sorting technique to better understand what it would do and how it would help. The image shows part of the synthesis.
Insights
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Organization leaders are interested in understanding who else is around in their neighborhood for potential collaboration and partnerships.
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A map and directory will be helpful for funders by providing a comprehensive picture of POC-led arts entities and their contributions.
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There are multiple layers of the audience for the map & directory, including people already in the art community, potential funders, and the public.
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The dearth of data and metrics on POC arts entities in NYC is a significant gap that contributes to underserved and underfunded status that needs to be addressed.
DESIGN
The design aimed to achieve:
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a creative but functional layout that highlights over 400 art entities
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key indicators to identify the art entity discipline
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easy access to learning more about each entity with the limited information
There were 4 key ideas to include for this design:
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Using icons to categorize art entity disciplines
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Filters for entity categories (ex: discipline, target audience, etc.)
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Directory cards to show both physical and virtual locations of the entities
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Buttons to link their main websites
I determined a map directory that would show cards that would be the directory on one side, and the map would be on the other.
User Flow
User flow for entities to find other organizations.
Site Map
Basic Site map to show where the features were included as well as how they would be integrated into the HueArts NYC website.
Prototype and Feedback
After designing a medium-fidelity prototype on ArcGIS Experience builder, I had an office hour-type session for art entity leaders to test out the prototype. I
used ArcGIS Experience to understand the program's parameters. The feedback was interesting because we had long conversations about big picture questions rather than minor details.
Feedback:
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First impression was that it was too much text - needed more visuals.
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Language seemed to be catered towards people who are in the art space. Who do we want to make the primary audience?
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Preferred more filters such as community served and by borough.
Key Changes
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Added logo images to those I can find
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Removed "discipline" and "category" text and replaced them with icons
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Placed search bar under Directory
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Used icons to make it more creative looking.
WRAP UP
Impact
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As of March 2022 the number of views of the map and directory is approximately 2500.
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A funder reached out on the day of the launch to scale the project for Museum Hue. We are in current phases of working on a statewide map and directory.
Reflection
Software Limitations
The software tool of ArcGIS Experience provides a range of freedom compared to other Esri mapping tools, but it is still not the same as developing from scratch. There were certain limitations to what I could do, and I had to communicate that with the project manager. These limitations included custom typeface and accessibility issues.
Data Limitations
Since this was a pilot project, the initial survey that went out to the advisory committee did not collect certain information that the advisory committee later brainstormed as useful for the map & directory. We understand the directory is only the beginning. We are hoping to collect some of that in the 2.0 version of the map & directory.