Improving User Experience for the Art Institute
The Art Institute of Chicago is the second-largest art museum in the world. With more than 300,000 works of art in a collection that is impressive enough to recently be named number one in the world by TripAdvisor, the Art Institute attracts more than 1.5 million people annually. As partners, we were tasked with engineering solutions that spanned multiple verticals and integrated varying technologies, all with the goal of improving the experience for all stakeholders, from visitors and members of the Art Institute to administrators.
Membership management and tour scheduling
We examined the needs of the Art Institute through research and discovery, and determined that we would need to implement both an online and mobile scheduler for student and teacher tours as well as a mobile membership card with added benefits for users. Our solutions would enhance the experience for visitors and administrators in multiple areas, improve conversions, and simplify a number of processes.
Dealing with complexity
The key to being successful within our projects for the Art Institute was our ability to engineer systems that would deal with a significant amount of variables. On the membership portal side, there are a number of different types and levels of memberships, a variety of combinations of memberships, as well as various gift types and donation options.
Similar combinations exist when it comes to tours, tour groups, tour leaders and lunch times. The back-end logic for the student tour registrations needed to be correct, and it was imperative that we acted upon the correct business logic to meet our goals. The other issue we faced was one of integration. We needed to lock down seamless system integration, and migration from old to new.
Integrated and cloud-deployed
A Microsoft Azure Cloud-deployed solution was pivotal to our success, seeing as access to the mobile solutions and free-flowing information was required from anywhere and from any device. We were able to work within our expertise: cloud-deployed solutions and Responsive Web Design as well as mobile apps. From within the online membership management portal, individuals can now purchase, renew or upgrade a membership, purchase memberships as a gift, or make a donation to the Art Institute from any device and from anywhere.
The scheduler applies the same concepts to scheduling and managing tours. We provided an administration panel with custom patron management, lunch management and reporting, simplifying the management process for administrators. On the other hand, we improved the student tour and teacher registration system, adhering to the requirements such a system needs; we nailed the back-end logic, making it easy for both guests and members to participate in the activities held by the Art Institute.
Galaxy integration for ticketing
As part of our long term partnership, Devbridge also integrated the Gateway Ticketing Systems Galaxy platform into our online eCommerce experience. Patrons of the museum can now skip the lines and purchase tickets directly from their mobile devices.
Conclusion
Our partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago represents a close relationship with a local company, but a company that is a worldwide leader in its industry. We've created multiple custom applications, enhancing the user experience for the visitors and administrators of the Art Institute of Chicago. It’s another brick in the foundation of a solid local partnership between two world-class organizations.
Now, as an Art Institute of Chicago visitor, if the app is on your phone, then your membership is right in your pocket, as is your ability to schedule a tour, or buy a ticket. And if you’re an administrator or manager for the Art Institute, we’ve dramatically simplified the process and reduced overhead.