Museums and civic spaces have more to offer than most people realize — but the gap between what's happening and what people actually know about keeps growing.
Most of what's happening locally never reaches the people who'd actually want to be there.
Local museums, cultural centers, and community spaces host exhibits, talks, and events year-round. Yet for most visitors, discovering any of it means stumbling onto a flyer, scrolling through a cluttered events page, or simply not knowing it happened at all.
Museums want to be found just as much as visitors want to find them — neither side has the tools to make that happen.
Museum professionals want to reach broader, younger audiences, but have limited time, staff, and tools beyond their existing channels. Visitors are curious and willing to explore, but only if something feels relevant, nearby, and easy to find.
VOQA is a mobile app that helps visitors discover museums and community events that match their interests, and helps museums reach the people who'd actually want to show up — without either side doing more work.
Our team visited two local museums in person — the San Jose Museum of Art and the Children's Discovery Museum — observing how visitors moved through each space and interviewing staff and visitors on-site. To broaden our perspective beyond what we could observe firsthand, we also spoke with professionals at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and The Tech Interactive, and with independent curator Mara Holt Skov.
In total, we spoke with 18 people — 10 museum professionals and 8 visitors — across San Jose Museum of Art, Children's Discovery Museum, Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, and The Tech Interactive. Two clear groups emerged, each experiencing the same gap from opposite sides.
Visitors
Jennifer
Life Coach
Maaheem
Writer & Marketer
Sarah
911 Operator
Julio
Assistant Manager
Yusef
Analyst
Shahla
Art Teacher & Artist
Michael
Custodian
Anthony
Grad Student
Learns through stories and slow, personal engagement. Wants to discover something new, share it, and walk away with a different perspective — but dense exhibits or a lack of representation can shut that down fast.
Julio
"I've left museums feeling more aware of struggles that other countries are experiencing… that's inspired me to take action, like looking up organizations and donating."
Anthony
"I'd like to see more representation of those experiences, including LGBTQ+ communities."
Professionals
Joan
Volunteer Docent, SJMA
Kelsey
K–12 Curriculum Manager, SJMA
Rich
Director of Exhibits, CDM
Terrence
Senior Exhibit Designer, CDM
Kevin
Exhibit Craftsperson, CDM
Kristi
Content Marketing Manager, CDM
Jenni
Retired Director of Education, CDM
James
Education Programs Developer, Rosicrucian
Erica
Education Programs Developer, The Tech
Mara
Art Historian & Curator
Mission-driven, working to make museums feel inclusive and worth returning to. Wants to highlight underrepresented stories and build trust with the community — but gets little visibility, sparse feedback, and credit for work visitors never see.
Erica
"Civic engagement means people feeling that their contributions to their community matter and that they have both agency and responsibility."
Kristi
"We are the bridge — the mouthpiece that connects everything happening behind the scenes to the public, while also relaying feedback to the team."
Visitors want to engage at their own pace and feel represented. Museums want real signal from the people they're trying to reach. Neither side has had the tools to make that happen.
How might we help visitors discover museum experiences that matter to them, while giving museums a simple way to reach the people who'd want to show up?
This question shaped every decision that followed: VOQA needed to feel personal for visitors — a feed worth checking, not another events board — while staying lightweight for museums to keep updated.
Before designing screens, we mapped how a visitor would move from first opening the app to finding and engaging with a museum — from sign-in, through discovery, into a museum's page, and out to saved collections and visit history.
This map made one thing clear: discovery couldn't be a separate destination. It needed to live on the home screen, front and center, personalized from the moment someone opens the app.
VOQA is a mobile app that helps visitors discover museums and community events that match their interests, and helps museums reach the people who'd actually want to show up.
Surfaces exhibits and events tied to what a visitor already cares about, instead of acting like a generic events board.
Find nearby museums and community spaces in seconds, without digging through separate museum websites.
Museums post updates — upcoming events, new exhibits, behind-the-scenes — on their own page and the shared feed. Visitors can post reviews and see friends' reviews, building trust in what's worth checking out.
Point your phone at an exhibit to get context instantly, replacing static or overwhelming text labels.
Save exhibits and events by interest, building a collection of places worth revisiting.
Gives smaller museums a simple, shared channel to reach the visitors who'd actually want to show up — not just their existing audience.
In seconds, you're looking at things you actually care about.
Less events board, more feed you actually want to check.
Point, scan, and save what's worth coming back to.
Connection isn't just a feature — it's the whole product.
The biggest shift in this project was realizing that "discovery" wasn't a search problem, it was a relevance problem. Once the home feed became personal, everything else — community activity, museum pages, saved collections — followed naturally from it.
Designing for two audiences at once taught me to stop optimizing for either one alone.
It would've been easier to build for just visitors or just museums. The gap only closed once I treated connection itself as the product — not a feature wrapped around two separate apps.
Continuing: testing the personalized feed with real visitors and museum partners · refining how museums update their pages with minimal effort · exploring notifications for saved interests.
