Artist Alley
March 2023 - July 2023
Artist Alley is a mobile app that strives to help artists showcase their art to the public. Artist Alley welcomes artists and art enthusiasts to appreciate the art that people create.
As an art appreciator and artist for fun, I notice that a lot of artists struggle a lot when trying to gain popularity. To maintain their relevance, they have to keep up with trends and post consistently which can be tiresome. As my first UX project ever in the Google UX Design Certificate Course, I wanted to learn and understand how I could design for this issue through a mobile app.
Team:
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Solo Project
My Role:
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UX/UI Design
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UX Research
Tools:
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Figma
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Miro
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Google Workspace
Research
Problem
Artists have a difficult time sharing and promoting their art online.
Goal
Design an app for Artist Alley that helps users gain attention for their artworks so they can be viewed online.
Summary
In my user research, I conducted empathy maps and interviews to understand the potential users for Artist Alley. After my research, I discovered that a lot of the users who hope to use Artist Alley are people who want to have their art noticed and potentially become popular. This was the primary user group and they confirmed my assumptions them. One of their main problems was getting the traction they need to gain an audience. Other problems included finding time to invest in showcasing their art and finding simple ways to present them.
Pain Points
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Traction: Artists have a hard time finding an audience to appreciate their art.
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Time: Users don’t always have time to invest their art career.
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Accessibility: Social media isn’t always reliable to get people’s art noticed and some find it difficult to use.
Persona
Trina is a busy college student and artist on social media who needs to find a better platform to showcase her art because other social media platforms don’t make her presence noticeable enough.
User Journey Map
Mapping out Trina’s user journey map showed how helpful it would be to have an app dedicated to creating art profiles.
Low Fidelity Designs
Paper Wireframes
These are sketches of paper wireframes for the home screen of my app. On the home screen, I wanted to prioritize showing artworks and artists because they are the main focus. I also wanted to highlight artists who want to be seen so I can address the pain points. Sketches with stars next to them are used in the final sketch of the home screen.
Digital Wireframes
Low-Fidelity Prototype
The low-fidelity prototype connects all the features of Artist Alley. The primary user flow comes from the user’s profile creation.
Usability Study
Parameters
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Study Type: Moderated Usability Study
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Location: United States | Remote
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Participants: 5 participants
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Length: 10 - 15 minutes
Findings
I conducted usability studies with several people to find out if my Artist Alley app was useful to them. I discovered that most of them had trouble going through the entire profile creation process and that they were unsure of what they could actually do on the app.
High Fidelity Designs
Mockups
I wanted users to go through the process of creating their profile by meeting necessary criteria to create one. However, my early design never really enforced that. After the usability study, I added the items that were necessary to creating a profile and prompted the users to create their profile in a specific order.
The usability study also showed how plain people’s art profiles looked. Despite being an art gallery app, I didn’t allow users to express their creativity some more. Therefore I added an option for users customize their profile banner and added it to the profile creation process.
High-Fidelity Prototype
The final high-fidelity prototype presented cleaner user flows for creating a profile. It also has cleaned up sections for viewing artists, artworks, and events.
Reflection
Working on my first UX project was an insightful learning process. I had to perform my own research to understand who I would design for, create wireframes and prototypes to see how they would flow, and conduct usability studies to help find flaws in my designs. It was a lot to cover, but it's definitely necessary for the UX design process.
When I was designing Artist Alley I learned that usability studies and peer feedback really help drive the project forward. They influence that app’s designs by providing insights that I have never thought of before. While my designs were a good start, they weren't appealing and I wasn't sure how to make them better. I never had any formal learning in design so studying graphic design might be useful for me in the future.