Closing the Gap between Artists & Art Collectors
My Role: UX Designer/PM | Duration: 2.5 Weeks | Project Status: Hand-Off
Are you an Artist or Art Collector who simply does not know where to start when it comes to buying or selling art? Budget Collector is here to help!
Overview:
Budget Collector is a mobile application that plans to use data, gathered from an on-boarding process, to create in-person gallery experiences. With the help of an AI-based art advisor, they hope to be able to close the gap between art professionals & art collectors.
The Challenge:
Our team was set out to create and design an onboarding experience for Budget Collector, that not only begins by learning the person behind the screen but also segregating by their label, Artist or Collector. Once completed, they would have full access to a profile and be able to connect with each other to form an art based community.
Our goals…
- Make an enjoyable onboarding experience to learn about the user.
- Allow artists & collectors to share their soul with the app in order to craft the best in-person experience.
- Separate the users into two categories: artists & collectors.
- Assure that people who want to sell, have art insurance.
“We want to help people feel confident buying/selling art and we want to create a virtual connection between artist & art collectors.”
Exploration
Before jumping straight to design, it was important for us to really understand the business we were about to tackle. After discussing with the Founder of Budget Collector, we took all the information and leveraged a Business Model Canvas and Competitive Analysis.
This helped us define Budget Collector and get a deeper understanding of their goals, as well as compare it to what was already put out in the world and how they can differentiate themselves from what already exists.
Problem
But what was the problem people where really experiencing? We assumed from our intial meeting with the founder that…
The industry of art buying is typically catered to those in the upper-class. People who have middle-class incomes also appreciate art and want to have it in their homes to view it wherever they want. Artists don’t know the value of their work and often undersell themselves.
How might we create a mutual virtual connection between artist and buyer?
To verify this, we set up a discussion guide with our target audience and conducted a total of 11 user interviews. We interviewed two sets of people based on the client’s two target audiences: artists and art collectors.
We found out that:
We validated our initial key assumptions: artists don’t know how to price their work; many buyers are not aware of artists that sell outside of museums and galleries; the art market in general is difficult to navigate and there are few resources for artists in such; and collectors are willing to invest in art that they truly love.
Define
Given our two target audiences, we created two fictional users, commonly known as personas. This allows us to empathize with potential users and help target our opportunities based on the people we interviewed ultimately culminating into two fictional audiences, the artist and the art collector. Additionally, it is important to understand their emotional journey during the selling or buying process and this is why we created user journeys.
Artist:
Meet Bose our 30 year old artist who believes art is an extension of who he is.
Art Collector:
Meet Vivian the 41 year old art collector and architect who has been exposed to art since she was a little girl.
How might we foster a connection between Vivian and Bose to build a network within the art community that benefits both artists and collectors?
Design/Solution
We held our design studio session remotely over zoom, and our client was in attendance to experience the process. We were easily able to come up with all the necessary steps for user onboarding, so we quickly transitioned into creating our mid-fidelity prototype.
The first round of testing went well, and we gained great insights to move into high-fidelity. We made few changes to the content of the questions between versions — we just needed to refine the copy to make it appear more as a conversation between the app and the user. The main changes made going into high-fidelity were strictly design related (creating buttons and transitions, adding color and icons, etc).
Introducing Budget Collector!
What’s Next…
Moving forward, of course more testing needs to be done. Additionally, some UI elements will need to be reconfigured before launch:
- Adjusting the color palette to be more friendly to those who are colorblind or otherwise visually impaired (current colors failed the WCAG contrast compatibility test)
- Adding a numerical value to the progress bar (to indicate how much has been completed);
- Grouping the questions into categories to make the process smoother overall;
- Adding numerical values to the questions asking about budget (instead of the current dollar sign icons)
- When the artist gets to the information about insurance, refining the copy to be more empathetic in its explanation of why/how the insurance will help them (given the importance of this feature to the app, this should be considered a high priority)
Ultimately, there is still much to be done for the Budget Collector app before it launches. But with our onboarding process created, our client can feel confident in completing the rest of the app, and making a network connecting artists to buyers.
