Cantor Arts Center

As part of CS 247: Service Design, my team and I worked with the Cantor Arts museum staff to design a pilot art borrowing service inspired by peer university programs.

We conducted user interviews, secondary research, and rapid prototyping to design an end-to-end experience that made borrowing and living with artworks feel approachable to students, while being sustainable for museum staff.

Through early conversations with museum staff, we learned that the Cantor was already operating with limited time and resources. While the museum had proposed the idea of an art borrowing program, they needed a clearer understanding of student demand and a thoughtfully designed experience that could fit within their existing operations.

We interviewed 12 people across four stakeholder groups: Cantor directors, former student art borrowers (from universities like UofChicago and MIT), student guides, and Stanford students interested in borrowing. To identify actor types that would be impacted by the program, we created an actor map that visualized the relationships between borrowers, staff, and institutional stakeholders within the system of art borrowing.

We synthesized our interviews into two grounded theories that reframed how the service should balance student enthusiasm with institutional capacity.

• Theory 1: A good application should help students uncover value without overburdening them or the organization administering it.
• Theory 2: Initial interest sparks passion and community, while consistent access to art fosters long-term inclusion and excitement.

Journey maps helped us visualize the student experience from discovery to post-borrow reflection, highlighting emotional highs, drop-off risks, and staff workload spikes.

• How might we find excitement amongst students for borrowing art from Cantor?
• How might we maximize satisfaction and curiosity around art borrowing?
• How might we build lasting community into the borrowing experience over time?

We explored multiple concepts including dating-app style matching, challenge-based applications, and postcard handouts to test how excitement and community could be sparked.

We stress-tested three concepts: art swiping for matching, challenge-based applications, and postcard engagement. Each experiment focused on identifying behavioral signals rather than validating aesthetics.

• Swiping Match: Would competitive matching increase bonding or create friction?
• Challenge Applications: Would students return for multiple rounds?
• Postcards: Would passive exposure create downstream engagement?