Redesigning Busan Gukje
ArtStreet Market Flow
Self-initiated Project & UXUI Design 2022
OVERVIEW
An app that helps Art Street visitors have an engaging in-store art experience with the help of AI technology.
📩 The following case study is a real-world project I conducted from a personal opportunity. I do not work for, nor am I affiliated with Busan Gukje Art Street organization. This case study was a valuable learning experience for me to solve the real-life problem of the unique offline marketplace and make it better. In addition, some of the painting images used are copyrighted by Hyunjoo Im, Art Street artist, who I interviewed and allowed me to present for this project.
Role
Product Thinking
Visual Design
UX Research
Duration
May - July 2022
(12 Weeks)
Process
Prototype
THE CONTEXT
Gukje Market Art Street in my local city of Busan.
Art Street is a local art marketplace run by Busan Street of Arts group, and was introduced in April 2005. With the aim of "The Korean Montmartre, this valuable place has contributed immensely to promote culture and art in the city. In order to support Busan artists, the organization has provided them with booth space at an affordable price for their healthy work environment where each artist can showcase and sell their art to the public.
THE PROBLEM
The visitors struggle to find the unique offline market experience.
Many visitors these days aren’t willing to come back to the place. Due to Art Street artists started to focus more on their side hustles for a living, causing many frequent absences from their booths attracting fewer visitors, visitors have become disappointed with the artist-less market experience on their visit.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
HMW design a fascinating self-guided app designed specifically for the visitors to enhance the overall in-store market flow?
THE SOLUTION
ArtStreet app helps the visitors have a personalized and streamlined in-store art market experience.
Sign up & Log in by user type
Since ArtStreet is catering to two primary users — Visitors and Artists, the role-based registration system allows users to encounter features and information tailored to both their specific needs.
Scan in-store artworks and discover fascinating stories
Visitors discover art at the moment of their visit. The AI photo recognition tool will give them a deeper appreciation for their favorite art they’re viewing. By uncovering the values of artwork, the visitors get more inspired, and artists get more exposure for their art.
Communicate with absent artists to easily ask for inquiries
During the absence of the artists from the place, the direct chat support flow linked after each art scan will easily and quickly assist visitors in asking their specific artist for simple questions. Meanwhile, it helps Art Street artists increase their productivity outside of their booths by streamlining their art-selling process.
PROBLEM DISCOVERY
Physical art market.
Design Opportunity
I came across Art Street while wandering the town myself. During my visit, I found some problems with the market flow of buying art at this place. I was shocked by the number of Art Street artists who stayed in their booths because out of the 120 work booths, only 5 to 7 were filled with the artists.
Assumptions
Starting from that point, it led me to two main assumptions. 1) No artwork captions or labels provided at this place. This lack of artwork information makes it difficult for visitors to appreciate them fully. 2) Due to the absence of artists, visitors have fewer opportunities to communicate with them and ask for inquiries.
USER INTERVIEW
Visitors were delighted with the idea of having a native app for Art Street to explore more about the artworks and get further information on the market news.
With the two major assumptions in mind, I started recruiting participants at ArtStreet as well as from social media. I then managed to gather 35 visitors within a week to conduct surveys for quantitative data. The goals were to validate my initial assumptions and understand the visitors’ impressions, their likes, and dislikes of the place.
92%
Of visitors noticed that most artists are absent from their booth during their visit.
86%
Of visitors feel difficult to interpret and comprehend the art they're seeing.
53%
Of visitors were not able to buy a piece they were interested at the moment of their visit.
Meanwhile, Art Street artists also have a concern about promoting their works.
I also conducted two rounds of in-person interviews with the artists at the place because they’re the secondary target audience. I was able to gather detailed data regarding their personal stories of Art Street, art motivations, existing biggest pain points, and other good comments on this place from a retailer perspective.
MAJOR INSIGHTS
After synthesizing all the data from both the visitors and artists, I organized them using affinity diagram and generated four main insights.
01
Lack of Artwork Information
The artworks displayed have no labels or descriptions because of the limited space to put them up. Many visitors found it difficult to interpret the art and this led them to disinterest in their choice of artwork, diminishing their desire to revisit the place.
02
Lack of Buying Motivation
The frequent absence of artists results in lower buying motivation among the visitors for their choice of artwork. They don’t want to waste time waiting for the artists on site to inquire, or buy a piece.
03
Limited Contact Method
The visitors are prone to hesitate to directly contact the artist via phone call when having a very small area of inquiry for multiple reasons such as time concerns, and lack of confidence. However, it’s mainly because they feel worried that it would invite pressure on their buying and inconvenience to the artists.
04
Concerns About Promoting
The artists use multiple online platforms to promote their work for new potential buyers, but they found it difficult to keep, especially their existing Art Street customers because there's no connection or effective method of connecting each other.
DESIGN PRINCIPLE
Decision points where I considered for the ArtStreet app.
IDEATION
Reframe the user Insights into HMW questions.
CHALLENGE
How did I approach
the multiple problems?
Indirect Competitor Research
The indirect competitors aim to satisfy the same needs as Art Street. It's what allows people to have an enjoyable art experience and provides customers with effective digital communication from a business perspective.
Through the research, an AI museum and messenger concept emerged.
I then used the MoSCow framework to measure the feasibility of the features. I prioritized the “AI photo recognition tool” as the top for a quality art-viewing experience. This is because it could be the key to potentially raising the visitor’s purchasing desire for the artwork they're interpreting, leading to a purchasing decision.
The main AI experience flow designed for the visitor side.
With an AI museum and messenger concept, it allows visitors to easily access artwork information and effectively communicate with ArtStreet artists whether for buying or asking small inquiries on their visit.
DESIGN ITERATION
Signup Screen
1) Enlarged the header and aligned it to the center for ease of reading. 2) Replaced with more comprehensive illustrations to be intuitive for ease of understanding. 3) Added progress bars to let the users know the easy and simplified signup process.
DESIGN ITERATION
Artwork Scan Screen
1) Resized the scan indicator to avoid competing when placing artwork within the frame. 2) Adjusted the text size of the scanning status, and moved it to the top to look more visible and intuitive to where the user’s eyes mostly see the screen.
DESIGN ITERATION
Artwork Description Screen
1) Resized the image section to make the Back button more visible. 2) Removed the bottom popup modal that causes distraction when scrolling.
REFLECTION
What I learned
Start with a concrete project plan.
The biggest challenge I faced was determining the scope of this project manageable within the timeline. While conducting my initial research, I often had to go back and forth to the beginning because I was off the track where everything seemed a bit abstract, so I had to restart the project, wasting time. I then realized that having clearly planned goals and motivations for a project is crucial because it helps stay focused on a problem and make a better decision.
Iterate design as much as I can.
Prototyping is just a starting process to briefly capture design. From the two rounds of testing, I had multiple iteration steps that helped me to correct my mistakes and improve the concept, and more importantly, gave me valuable learning opportunities to think deeply about the product from the perspective of the users.
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