Museum experience research consistently shows 2 drop-off points for younger visitors: the gallery floor (no orientation, no narrative thread), and post-visit (nothing to take away, share, or remember).

NGMA's existing identity is rooted in a strong visual language, the navy and moss green of its logo, the architecture of the building itself. The redesign had to extend that language into a full experience system, not replace it.

THE RESEARCH

To understand the actual visitor experience, I visited NGMA in person and observed someone with no prior knowledge of art navigating the space independently.

What I found on the ground:

The gallery floor had no directional signage toward the main collection, visitors wandered without orientation. Art pieces were arranged with no distinction of genre, medium, or time period, making the collection feel like storage rather than curation. The painting information cards contained multiple typographic errors, undermining the institution's credibility. The primary audience present was young people in their late teens to twenties, exactly the demographic the experience was failing most.

The observational finding that anchored the whole project:

Watching a first-time visitor move through the gallery, the same three questions kept surfacing: "What is this art style?" "Who is this artist, what period were they in?" "What is this art medium?" The information existed, it just wasn't accessible at the moment of curiosity. By the time someone found context, the emotional connection to the work had passed.

What this told me:

The NGMA experience had two compounding problems, a broken physical journey (no wayfinding, no narrative) and a broken information layer (context inaccessible at point of need). The redesign had to solve both.