Āto — The app connecting you with local artists & the arts community!

A UX/UI case study.

We live in an era of a rented generation — you can’t paint a wall to express yourself, so you’re left in a bleak flat with no character. People turn to art to personalise their space, however there’s a lot to consider when buying a piece to fill that empty wall, such as where the art came from, size, installation, framing, condition of the art, budget and finally … where to access local, affordable art!

I went down a road of discovery to hone in on how people purchase art, what they class as ‘affordable’ and what struggles they face when in the process of discovery and purchase. The end product from all my research is this app — Ato.

Research

I interviewed 20 people and created a google survey to discover what art people have in their homes and how they came in possession of it. I wanted to know know what people classed as ‘affordable’, how they discovered new artists, what their pain points were when purchasing art and why so many people had bare walls throughout their home, despite being vocal about their appreciation and love for art.

Key Findings:

• Millennials can’t afford to buy quality art
• People want to buy art from their local community or directly from an artist
• There’s a lacking of closeness people feel to artists online
• A lot of people don’t currently feel involved in the artistic community
• People don’t know where to find out what art events are happening in their local area

The Problem

Millennials need a way to access affordable art from local artists while feeling included in the artistic community

The Solution?

Develop a platform that allows millennials to discover local artists with economical price tags and and help users explore a different side of their cities artistic community.

Competitor Research

• Artsy — for information architecture and insight to the arty scene
• Saatchi Art — for price point and branding. Saatchi Art also lets you upload and sell your work on their site
• Time Out — for guides of what events and attractions are near you
• Google Maps— for location mapping purposes

Feature Prioritisation

I collated all the information from my research and filtered it through an affinity map, pulling the best insights and pain points from it. This helped me address WHY users wanted this platform and what they wanted the thing to do. I made a feature prioritisation map (four quadrant matrix) to help determine where to focus development within the platform. It also helped me define what my MVP will include. These were:

• Location mapping — to allow access to see where the user is and to pin point what art and events are near by
• Discovery Page — to inform users of what’s out there to get involved with
• Ease of search functionality — being able to refine what the user is wanting to search for through categorisation
• ‘Whats on’ in your area — a feature to let users see what art/events are available in their area

How Might We..

Working through the features the users wanted, I reframed them into HMW questions. These are a few opportunities for design I saw emerging:

• HMW provide millennials access to local artists at an affordable price.
• HMW allow users to search and find different types of art and be easily categorised
• HMW provide users a way to easily find local art expos to attend so they can foster a relationship in their local community
• HMW maintain and drive repeat engagement by having a highly curated artist/ theme of the week/ hot this week
• HMW give users fresh content to keep them coming back and engaging with my brand and community
• HMW create a location mapping feature with tags on whats near by

Paper prototypes

Iterating on my paper prototypes was a crucial part of research. I ran A/B experiments over 7 days based on quantitative research and rendered on my findings. Main changes included hierarchy on the homepage, global navigation icons, and language used.

Ideation & UI

Responding to user feedback was a large part of ideation. Being honest my UI mid-fidelity for V.1 & V.2 were massive failures and both were scrapped completely. It was great to get such open feedback early on in this process so I could iterate based on what my users wanted and what worked/ didn’t work.

V.1 — When testing my initial design, it tested poorly with male users in that they thought the design was too feminine and didn’t appeal to them. The colour schemes were too light and the font wasn’t bold enough. I took their feedback on board and tried a more brutalist design in my V.2 wireframes.

V.2 — When testing V.2 the constructive criticism I got was that it was too hectic and busy. The users found it hard to navigate around and didn’t know what was a button and what was imagery. They also found the navigation confusing and didn’t explore many icons.

V.3 — With my final design the tests were fluid and functional. I rescheduled the global design trends and executed a different style of brutalist design. I liked the concept of Brutalism being minimal, raw designs and wanted to practice this concept with Ato.

I used predominantly black, white and red blocks of colours leaving bare white spaces instead of filling gaps. I also had to be comfortable with people thinking the design was ugly with clashing colours.

It tested really well with users and I’m now looking into developing it further.

Next Steps & Future Iterations

• Explore other cities
• Adding in links to artists social media sites including
• Look into hierarchy with the categories

Say Hi

I’m Hattie — An Experience Designer with a background in advertising and account management. I have a specialist focus on UX/CX and enjoy designing solutions for problems. Everything we interact with is designed, but few things are designed properly and with thought. I’m passionate about creating user experiences which are innovative, fluid and functional.