We help high-impact organizations lead with their visitor's experience
Services we offer
Co-create human-centered experiences
Master Planning support
Bring visitor and audience voice, expectations and needs into ideation, planning and decision-making processes to make sure you’re on-target for creating human-centered experiences for current and future visitors.
Exhibit, hall or amenity assessment
Connect more deeply with the context of your visitor’s experience. Understand what’s working, what’s not, and why. And perhaps most importantly, understand what to do about it!
Program, initiative or campaign assessment
Determine where your audience is experiencing gaps or barriers when engaging or attempting to engage with your program or message, and discover the appropriate strategies to best connect them to your rich content.
Concept testing for exhibits or digital
Determine whether your concept resonates with visitors, and how to scaffold content and strategies to dynamically engage multiple audience segments.
Amplify your org’s user-experience capacity
Intro to UX workshop
Full-day customized, immersive workshop to introduce and work with user-experience concepts.
This is offsite, but local to your institution.
Human-centered brainstorm
In-person, facilitated brainstorm for your team to co-create a user-centered experience concept, kickoff a project, or move an existing project forward
Virtual UX consult
Get your project off and running to a human-centered start! Participate in a series of guided video conference calls to inform your project with a user experience approach.
Human-centered strategies can help you
Improve your current experience
Drive change in your organization through user experience research
Understand the current experience—what’s working, what’s not—and WHY
Identify barriers, gaps and bottlenecks—and how to solve them
Pinpoint patterns of delight, connection and mission success – and opportunities to build upon them
Shape your future experience
Future-proof your experiences with horizon-focused strategies
Inform master planning, programming or gallery-specific projects with future-focused concepts generated from audience data
Gain insight and guidance to develop experiences that meet future needs and evolving habits, and address emerging technologies
Determine how to activate and implement key mission concepts to meet the needs of current and future audiences
Easily communicate complex data
Make confident decisions based on actionable, visual deliverables
Share wall-sized visual deliverables with a variety of stakeholders and audiences to quickly communicate data and get consensus
Easily identify areas needing attention or improvement and the appropriate actions to take
Focus on next steps and implementation strategies instead of needing to ‘interpret’ the data or ‘figure out what it means’
Case Studies
10
Weeks to complete
Experience Master Planning
Case Study #1
Client Goal:
Reimagine the visitor experience, attract new audiences, and position itself for the visitor of the future
Research Strategy:
Conduct a multi-layered, user-experience strategy focused on three elements: (1) revealing the current experience journey, (2) identifying levers to activating key mission concepts, and (3) uncovering emergent activities, trends and discourses to develop concepts for anticipating future needs, evolving habits, and emerging technologies
Deliverables:
30+ wall-sized data models, shared during an interactive, 2-day workshop
Testimonials:
“They challenged preconceived notions, put their own biases aside and immersed themselves into the experience, allowing them to be true champions for our audiences and the organization”
1
Week to complete
Human-centered brainstorming with Audubon
Case Study #2
Client Goal:
Incorporate team expertise into a plan to revitalize and redesign both their internal exhibit hall and the external exhibit area with particular focus on exhibits and interpretive themes
Research Strategy:
Facilitate and synthesize a series of user-centered brainstorms, centered around incorporating Audubon’s new strategic plan. Produce exhibits and an interpretive plan with a series of custom created visuals, aimed at communicating the vision to internal staff and leadership, funding sources and exhibit design teams
Deliverables:
Visual slide deck, illustrating new exhibit concepts within existing space
Testimonial:
“The high level plan Stefanie created for us enabled us to secure further funding for the project and to fully move forward with the work”
8
Weeks to complete
Accessibility at Field Museum
Case Study #3
Client Goal:
Evaluate existing programs, build on identified successes, and solve for barriers and gaps that may exist
Research Strategy:
Conduct targeted, human-centered interviews to assess the current experiences of audience members with the four accessibility initiatives, as well as relevant, emergent trends to guide approach and modification toward future solutions
Deliverables:
7 wall-sized data models, including 3 Visitor Journey Maps, shared during an interactive workshop
Testimonial:
“Results were shared in graphic and intuitive journey maps that were much easier for a variety of stakeholders to digest than traditional reports.”
About us
Our mission
Our team shares a deep conviction that nothing is more powerful than the connections made between people when experiencing joy, enlightenment, excitement and wonder. We are inspired to provide families, communities and the public-at-large high-quality, delightful interactions that enhance, educate and promote connection with others.
We believe design is best when informed by user data, meaning our clients can get their design right the first time, and our end-users enjoy exciting, effective, intuitive experiences.
Dig In UX is the only user-centered research and consulting firm for projects geared toward the public-at-large. We focus on transforming the complex (and often contradictory) information of client audiences into a coherent, meaningful, buildable plan. We aim to foster an appreciation for user-centered research and data, whereby our clients can deeply consider the lives and needs of their customers and users to meet and exceed their expectations.
Our goal is to delight and excite daily citizen life by making more connected, seamless, human experiences in the non-profit, public and community spheres, while remaining mindful of client budget constraints.
Stefanie Mabadi, Founder
Stefanie is a powerful storyteller. Her expertise lies in gathering and communicating the complex human stories her clients need to hear and helping them take their next steps. As researcher and strategist in the digital UX field for over 15 years, her work has shaped the digital experiences for Fortune 50 companies, including General Motors, Grainger, Samsung, Walgreens, LG and GE.
Powered by her love for museums and informal learning, in 2012 she began the journey to transform her human-centered research expertise. As the Director of Experience Research and Evaluation at the Perot Museum, she applied UX methodologies to an IMLS grant collaboration with the Dallas Museum of Art for a Teen Art + Science pilot, implemented a large-scale human-centered research project to guide a hall-wide exhibit refresh in the Being Human Hall, and applied user-experience principles internally to identify levers and foster culture change within the organization.
Encouraged by excitement from executive museum staff and museum industry leaders for her human-centered approach and wall-sized deliverables, Stefanie decided she would more broadly share her skills and methodologies to the field. After a period of honing her skills to fit the needs of the museum sector challenges, she launched Dig In UX in 2016 to offer human-centered research and strategy to the national and international museum communities.
Along with her seasoned working group of UX researchers, designers, educators and consultants, she is grateful to have partnered with some of the nation’s leading museums, ed tech entrepreneurs and higher ed institutions.
Jamie Creola, Education Consultant
Jamie is passionate about cultivating curiosity, engaging and connecting diverse audiences through innovative experiences and partnerships, and inspiring lifelong learning.
She practices a highly collaborative and empowering work ethic with clients, communities, and staff – always conscious of the importance of multiple voices, reflecting diversity and inclusion in her work.
Over the course of her career, Jamie has worked for museums, zoos, aquariums and science centered nationwide. Prior to her work with Dig In UX, Jamie has served as the VP of Education at the Institute for Systems Biology, Perot Museum of Nature and Science and the Woodland Park Zoo.
Contact
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