See full case study below
The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, FL welcomes 400,000 visitors annually from 30+ countries, and houses 2,400+ of Dalí’s surrealist works––the preeminent collection of Dalí‘s work outside of Spain. The 60,000 Sq. Ft. space is the only one of its kind in North America, and it provides an overall economic impact to the greater St. Petersburg area of over $140 million a year and prompts direct spending of over $70 million a year. They partnered with the Dartmouth Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab to create a new experience for the museum’s digital wing, and I was one of the eleven students who worked on this project.
As an influential arts institution, the Dalí Museum paves the way for the use of digital technologies within the museum space. Having already developed VR and AR exhibits, the museum was keen on making use of eye-tracking technology, but did not yet know how they wanted to implement its abilities within the museum. Pupil action and saccade data is especially useful to their curatorial staff, who were interested in compiling the analysis of such data into an academic paper about the relationship between art content and user gaze.
This led to a unique design problem: we knew the how (the solution would leverage eye-tracking) but did not yet understand the why or the what we were designing. All we knew was that the experience had to use this technology and had to be engaging to the museum’s visitors. Eye-tracking for commercial use is also relatively new, so an added challenge was making the experience easy to navigate for thousands of daily guests.
How might we leverage nascent technology into a novel use case without established best-practices?
We designed a 3-minute experience with 170+ prototyped Figma screens that analyzed the pattern and duration of users looking at an artwork for the first time and compared with what a curator would want to focus on in a painting. Then, they would teach out about elements of the painting that you saw or might have missed. We also built in the feature to allow users to save their data and reference it later as a keepsake from the museum, or to share on social media.
Our designs will be installed in the museum for public use following their $42M expansion. To prepare for this, six of us spent 5 days in Florida meeting with the museum’s curatorial staff, demo-ing our project, and giving a technological review to their IT staff for a smooth handoff and beta launch. We also received a tour of the premises, grabbed lunch with museum donors, and got mic-ed up for some interviews!
To establish a baseline understanding of the museum and “art-tech” field, we did industry research on a broad range of ways new technologies were applied to arts institutions: from the New York Metropolitan Museum’s VR experience to Adobe’s collaboration with the SF MoMa to rethink the selfie.
After determining the existing and the possible, we also set out to gain a deeper understanding of the paintings we would be working with. The museum provided 11 paintings with descriptions written by their team of curators that they wanted to be a part of this collection.
We set about sectioning off each painting to their individual elements –– this exercise not only allowed us to appreciate each individual section of the painting, but also created a back-end map of the X-Y coordinates of sections that would allow us to cross-reference user gaze paths with the painting element they were viewing.
What the museum (our client) wants and what users need are not always in line––obviously both want the guest to have a good experience, but the means of achieving that may collide. Thus, a key design challenge was negotiating needs and constraints.
User Needs
Reassurance of the validity of their artistic interpretation
Learning, in a way that feels valuable, engaging, and exciting, not boring
A memorable experience that gives them something to take home (digital or physical)
Client Needs
Data collection to learn about visitors' viewing/learning preferences
Speed so lines and crowding are minimized (2-3 min experience max)
Educate and engage a wide range of visitor personas
Ideate – Creating the Experience
After getting an understanding of both what was possible and what our clients/users needed, we began ideating and storyboarding possible experiences: from AR memory retention games to tracking how long eyes looked at a certain color.
After presenting the storyboards to client, we agreed on the concept of tracking user’s visual data and teaching them about each element of the painting.
Decision #1: Displaying User Data
The Challenge
Using the Tobii Nano Pro, we could capture rich gaze data—recording X/Y coordinates multiple times per second and mapping where users looked and for how long. While this gave us a wealth of data, the challenge was finding a way to present it in a format that was both easy to understand and engaging for the public.
Our Solution
We decided to first show each user’s 30-second gaze path—a sequential line connecting gaze points from the moment they began viewing a painting to half a minute later. This allowed users to recall their own thought process as their eyes moved between areas.
We then compared their gaze path to a curator’s, so they could see what they might have missed—or brag if their viewing style matched a professional’s. Afterward, we displayed a heat map, showing areas of high and low attention based on point density and gaze duration, and compared this to a curator’s heat map as well.
Users enjoyed this approach because it revealed what they focused on most while still allowing them to connect their experience to that of an expert.
Decision #2: Highlighting Objects
The Challenge
To teach users about different parts of a painting, we needed a way to draw attention to the specific element being discussed without distracting from the overall composition. We explored different methods of highlighting that would feel natural and intuitive.
Our Solution
After testing options such as blurring the background or highlighting an object’s contour, we chose to point an arrow directly at the object, with the arrow’s movement following the natural path of a curator’s gaze—making the experience feel guided and human.
Decision #3: Visual Themes
The Challenge
Our experience would be publicly showcased, so it needed a cohesive visual identity that sparked delight without distracting from the featured paintings. The design had to enhance the artwork, not compete with it.
Our Solution
We explored multiple visual directions before selecting a minimalistic black theme—a choice that created an elegant, unified look while allowing the paintings to remain the central focus.
We sat down with the COO/CMO and walked through every single caption (of 100+ captions) to time them and insert strategic copy breaks so that the entire experience was thoughtfully and purposefully timed, and even created a custom monitor and designed our final layout around the placement of the Tobii Nano on it.
We were able to get feedback directly from the public via two technology expos at Dartmouth. Students, professors, and local residents tried out our exhibit, and it was even tried out by our President Phil Hanlon! We were also get get feedback during 4 design critiques with the Dartmouth Digital Applied Learning and Innovation Lab, and through weekly partner feedback sessions.
When it came to the final round of iteration, we put a high-level of thought into how it might come together. We created standard components for every caption, and color-matched them to best fit with the color scheme of each of the 11 paintings. We also got new professionally-taken JPEGs of the paintings so that their color tone was as life-like as possible.
Below are our final, copywritten 170+ screen prototype we shipped to client. On top of the physical product, we also visited St. Petersburg, FL to ship our work, set up our hardware, and train the staff.
We were finally able to meet all of our key partners in real life and grab a meal with them (and a board member of the museum). Outside of doing copywriting with the C00, we had each of the executives try out our experience, and walked through it’s technical details with the museum’s IT staff for clean handoff.
We also were able to meet the curators who helped us formulate the didactic captions––it was a really cool moment to be able to see people who know everything about the artwork get the opportunity to experience it in a completely new way.
We also met with the Dali Museum social team, filming promotional content and behind-the-scenes tutorials for the team to reference when we rolled off the project (and when it would go public!)
Our team spent the weekend before the demo trip exploring the beautiful St. Petersburg area. From playing frisbee on the beach to working a late-night before the client demo in the Airbnb wrapping up final changes, it was a great trip.
One of my main takeaways from this experience is the importance of being passionate about your work and surrounding yourself with people who feel the same. When things get daunting it really helps to be surrounded by people all excited about the project and pushing to create the best possible product. The designers, developers, and PMs on this team were some of the best I’ve ever worked with, and I am honored to be able to call them teammates and friends.
Creating something to be installed in such a prestigious museum and for thousands of visitors is so exciting as a young designer and an Art History major. It was genuinely moving to be able to combine my love for art and design in a cohesive and effective way. COVID-19 has also made it such that I’ve rarely had the opportunity to truly engage with who I’m designing for, and getting the opportunity for in-person co-creation just made the design process that much more rewarding.