The Met
Work Summary
Product, brand, and motion design for The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Product Designer
2018–2021
As part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s industry-leading Digital Department, I’ve led and collaborated on design initiatives across the museum’s marquee digital experiences — from interactive design and art direction for the Met Primer, brand and motion direction for Met Stories, to embedded product design on the agile Visit team — to helping establish and evolve Marble, The Met’s first modern digital design system.
By advocating for design thinking, user and product testing, iterative approaches, and adoption of modern collaborative design tools like Figma, my team members and I have pushed the working culture at the museum to be more strategic, user-centered, and less siloed down department lines.
Working closely with the museum’s content, curatorial, and exhibition design wings, our in-house content and product teams strive to create beautifully functional and universally accessible digital experiences, using cutting-edge technologies to facilitate deeper and more meaningful connections with one of the world’s most expansive art museum and its vast collections.
Project case studies available upon request.
Special Thanks
UX Team members: Bora Shehu, Madhav Tankha, Courtney Allen; honorary UXers: Jessica Cardona, Maria Kozanecka, Isabella Graces, Lela Jenkins; UX fellows and interns: Edra Stafaj, Yukie Park, Vonetta DeVonish
Awards
Webby (Nominee) — Play It Loud Primer, 2020
Webby (Honoree) — Met Stories, 2021
Shorty (Winner) — Met Stories, 2021
Case Study
Marble Design System
The Met's digital offerings are like the city of Rome: layers of architectural eras, all built on top of each other but experientially disconnected. In order to start designing iteratively and sustainably, we knew we needed to first lay a solid foundation:
Marble is The Met's first modern digital design system. Building upon The Met's brand guidelines designed by Wolff Olins in 2016, Marble is a device-agnostic, componentized digital design system for creating mobile, tablet, desktop, and in-gallery experiences. I was a part of the project's foundation in 2019, and have gone on to be responsible for growing and scaling its design across external and internal teams, as well as mentoring up-and-coming designers on using it to create cohesive and compelling experiences.
Impetus
- Surveyed the landscape of successful design systems in use from both within and outside the cultural sector
- Accessed the institutional needs and opportunities that using a design system could alleviate
- Built support within the department toward sustainable and systematic design approaches
Discovery
- Audited user journey inconsistencies across the museum's tangled web of third-party and legacy products
- Interviewed users from each audience group about their needs
- Discussed with dev teams on how to modernize and improve the efficiency and outcomes of our work
Prototyping
- Helped align and support collaborative team design explorations
- Structured a taxonomy of elements and modules, simplifying and merging redundancies as needed
- Created robust Figma components and styles using advanced design features like Autolayout, Interactive Components, and Variants
Development
- Worked with Project Managers to prioritize development based on upcoming needs and use cases
- Collaborated with Frontend Developers on creating flexible React components using Storybook and Chromatic
- Engaged with Accessibility Working Group to draft web Accessibility Guidelines
- Crafted a bespoke Design System Site to document the system as it grows and evolves in Figma and Storybook
Release and Iteration
- Continue to test ecosystem and its relationships and improved interoperability of components
- Accessing what needs are covered by existing components and what new components are needed as development continues
- Improving or substituting components and patterns based on findings from user testing and analytics
- Using the Design System to craft intentional and cohesive user journeys that empower and immerse the user and further the institution's goal of being one museum for everyone
- Served during record traffic events, including going viral in Japan for The Met’s Animal Crossing app, and during the 151th anniversary Google Doodle