Project Overview
This project details how our team partnered with the National Gallery of Art (NGA) to create a mobile-first digital experience aimed at building a lasting, trusting relationship with Gen Z audiences by leveraging their desire for fun, social connection, and cultural expression. The goal was to establish the NGA as a forward-thinking institution that meets younger audiences where they are digitally.
Shaping a Digital Museum Experience for Gen Z
The National Gallery of art is interested in understanding how to further engage the Gen Z demographic audience. From previous research, Gen Z are curious, creative, and digitally savvy—but traditional museum content and interfaces don’t always speak their language or spark their interest. Our Team is looking to build a solution that helps engage gen-z with the national gallery of art’s digital platform and keeps them engaged with what is happening in/around the museum.
Why Gen Z Isn’t Staying on the NGA’s Digital Platform
The core challenge was transforming the NGA’s online presence to appeal to a young audience that primarily uses museum websites for seeking specific information, not for general exploration. We needed to address how to draw and retain more Gen Z audiences to the NGA’s online presence, keep “fun seeker” archetypes engaged, and balance playful design with the mission of a trusted cultural institution.
Defining the Gap
Gen Z is social, curious, and culturally expressive, and NGA needed a platform that aligned with these behaviors.
So we asked ourselves,
“How might we draw and retain more Gen Z audiences to the National Gallery of Art’s online presence?”
“How might we keep “fun seeker” archetypes engaged with what the National Gallery of Art is doing?”
“How might we balance “fun” with NGA’s mission of being a trusted cultural institution?”
Our Investigative Approach:
To help us answer the above questions, we used four research methods.
- Generative Interviews: Conducted with five Gen Z museum visitors and one museum professional.
- Competitive Analysis: Examined other institutions (The Met, Museo del Prado) and companies (New York Times) engaging Gen Z in game-like ways.
- Survey: Gather information from Gen Z people who visit museums.
- Desk Research: Reviewed articles on Gen Z and Museums.
Team Members: Lanting Ko, Claire Paisley, Isadora Oh, Eric Lopez interviewing Industry Professional Sara Snyder from Smithsonian Institution
Key Learnings that Redefined the Problem:
- Fun is a Social Tool: Gen Z finds fun in connection; they share content to laugh or discuss together. Digital museum content must be inherently social and shareable.
- Utility vs. Exploration: Gen Z tends to use museum websites mainly to find specific information, rather than for general exploration. This highlighted the need for the experience to be intrinsically engaging.
- Meet Them Where They Are: We were advised against expecting people to willingly navigate to a dedicated website, suggesting the need to “hang out in the places where people already are spending time”.
Meet Gen Z Where they already are
Our strategy was centered on two main directives: transforming one-way museum interactions into shareable, co-creative experiences and making information discovery feel engaging. We realized that success meant moving beyond simple quizzes or riddles and embedding social play directly into the art experience.
The Conceptual Leap: We started with several low-stakes ideas,
- A.R.T. (Another Riddle to Think): Players collaboratively decode a mysterious story by asking the host/system questions that can only be answered with “Yes,” “No,” or “Doesn’t matter” to gather clues and discover the truth.
- ArtTiles: This is a guessing game where players race against a timer and limited lives to identify an artwork revealed partially behind a 5×5 grid of tiles from a set of four options.
- Frame or Flame: Users are presented with five true or false questions about an artist or artwork, swiping after each to reveal the correct fact, and can share their results with friends as an emoji-based hint.
- NGA ArtCraft: Users “craft their own space” using drag, stamp, and remix tools with textures sampled directly from NGA artworks, with each element linked back to its source artwork for exploration.
- Heist & Seek: Players explore stylized museum rooms to solve puzzles, decode hidden clues, and complete mini-games to track down a virtual artifact, earning ranks and sharing their journey in a “detective journal.”
but these lacked the instant, competitive, social dynamic Gen Z craves. Our breakthrough was the pivot to “Art or Fart,” a concept that directly mimics Gen Z’s participation in fast-moving digital trends, instantly transforming art appreciation into a competitive, community-focused game. This allowed the NGA to facilitate a community moment rather than just providing information.
Transforming Learning into Game
The final design is “Art or Fart,” a competitive, multiplayer, timed, weekly art challenge game where players use themed palettes and tools inspired by current exhibits to paint to a prompt, then vote on each other’s creations in a runway-style feed to climb a weekly leaderboard. Every feature in our solution was a direct response to a research-driven insight. Encountering specific design obstacles ultimately allowed us to gain pivotal learning points that were integral to finalizing the design.
Why This Works for Gen Z
Art or Fart reflects Gen Z’s behavior across TikTok trends, Roblox challenges, and everyday creative apps. It combines play, creation, and social validation into a simple, low-pressure, expressive, and highly shareable game.
Why This Works for NGA
For the NGA, the game encourages deeper visual engagement by introducing artworks through themes and creative prompts. It increases user retention through repeatable game loops. The NGA can also expand the game’s content easily by adding themes connected to current exhibitions, further reinforcing the museum’s website as a participatory cultural platform.
How the Design Evolved Through Challenges
Challenge#1: Drawing on the mobile
Drawing on a small mobile screen presents more challenges than drawing on a laptop or desktop display. Because users typically rely on their fingers to create artwork, we decided to conduct an additional round of competitive analysis to inform the design of our canvas.
Solution#1: Integrated an AI drawing tool (Auto Brush) that suggests options for the user.
Learning Point: Directly addressed user concerns about the limitations of drawing complex shapes with a finger on a small screen, making the tool feel assistive rather than frustrating.
Challenge#2: Institutional Voice Control
During our check-in, the NGA team expressed concerns about the open chat feature, noting that it could become difficult to moderate and may not be appropriate for a museum platform.
Solution#2: Replaced the open text chat function with a Reactions button (like thumbs-up, heart, etc.).
Learning Point: This was a crucial move to align with NGA’s guidelines for a conservative, trusted environment while still allowing users necessary fun, social self-expression.
Challenge#3: Enhancing Replayability and Learning Opportunities
Initially, we thought it would be fun for users to vote on a theme, but we soon encountered several issues. For example, how would we handle a tie? And would users be able to understand the style–object combinations presented in this format?
Solution#3: Created a carousel style theme selector combining art style and object (e.g., Pop Dog).
Learning Point: This provided a more extensive, dynamic theme library than simple voting and created a built-in learning opportunity to explain the art style, linking back to the NGA’s collection.
The Final Solution:”Art or Fart” – A Co-Creative Art Game
Solution Overview: The “Art or Fart” solution provides a playful, competitive bridge to Gen Z, successfully translating museum content into engaging, shareable experiences.
Key Features
Take Away & Validation
The primary learning was balancing the NGA’s institutional integrity with Gen Z’s desire for social self-expression. Pivoting to the Reactions feature and the AI Drawing Tool addressed this balance directly. The NGA clients were excited about the concept’s feasibility, with one noting,
”A lot of this is familiar to our developers into our site… I can see this easily fitting in to our portfolio of products.”
Next Steps
Future work will focus on developing a fully functional prototype, expanding the catalogue of themes, and integrating the “Learn More” feature to directly connect gameplay to NGA collections for continuous educational value. We also plan to introduce a reward-based progression system that encourages long-term engagement and could potentially connect to the broader NGA ecosystem to extend the experience beyond the game.
Thanks for reading!