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)
Team
Solo Project
Tool
Figma
Miro
THE CONTEXT
What is Art Street?
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.
Art Street aims to provide opportunities for the visitors to explore the local artworks at firsthand and face-to-face communication with the artists. However, visitors find it difficult to enjoy the unique experience when they visit.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we design a fascinating self-guided app specifically
designed for the visitors to enhance the overall in-store market flow?
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.
Discover Art Street art
& the fascinating stories
Visitor users 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.
Create and manage a personal collection of favorite artworks
Visitor users save artwork, finding out what they like and what they don’t. It will also provide a chance to get more connected with their favorite artworks, which ultimately helps them measure and make good purchasing decisions on what they’re interested in.
Communicate with Art Street artists to easily ask for inquiries
During the absence of the artists from the place, the direct chat support flow linked after each art scanning will easily and quickly assist visitors in asking their specific artist for simple questions. Additionally, it will help Art Street artists increase their productivity outside of their booths by streamlining their art-selling process.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITY
Real-world problem was discovered in my hometown of Busan.
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.
Starting from that point, it led me
to two main assumptions.
-
No artwork captions or labels provided at this place. This lack of artwork information makes it difficult for visitors to appreciate them fully.
-
Due to the absence of artists, visitors have fewer opportunities to communicate with them and ask for inquiries.
INITIAL MARKET RESEARCH
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.
VISITOR SURVEY
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.
I started recruiting participants at Art street as well as from social media. I then managed to gather 35 visitors within a week to conduct surveys for quantitative data. The primary purpose of this survey is to validate my initial assumptions and understand the visitors’ impressions, their likes, dislikes of the place, the existing pain points when discovering or buying artworks even communicating with the artists, and more importantly, the awareness of this place's presence.
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.
ARTIST INTERVIEW
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.
Hyunjoo Im (left), Munja Jang (right) — Art Street Artist
MAJOR USER INSIGHTS
After synthesizing all the data from both the visitors and artists, I organized them using affinity diagram for insight generation.
01/
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.
03/
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, lack of confidence and personal factors. However, it’s mainly because they feel worried that it would invite pressure on their buying and inconvenience to the artists.
02/
The absence of artists results in poor communication with the visitor as well as lower buying motivation for the choice of artwork. They don’t want to waste time waiting for the artists on site to buy the piece.
The absence of artists results in poor communication with the visitor as well as lower buying motivation for the choice of artwork. They don’t want to waste time waiting for the artists on site to buy the piece.
04/
The artists use multiple online platforms to promote their work for gathering new potential buyers, but they found it difficult to keep, especially their existing Art Street customers because there’re no connections and effective methods connecting each other.
Lack of Artwork Information
Frequent absence of artists
Limited Contact Method
Concerns About Promoting
DESIGN PRINCIPLE
Decision points where I considered for the ArtStreet app.
DEFINE TARGET USERS
Which target audience should be ideally prioritized?
In this process, I faced a challenge of which target group should be ideally prioritized for this scope of the project. I then decided to focus more on the visitor side because the ultimate goal is to create a feasible solution that optimizes the overall market flow with the original motto of this place, "allowing the public to explore Busan local art".
Primary: Experienced Visitor
Secondary: Art Street Artist
Focusing more on Jihee’s journey at Art Street as a visitor.
This map shows the interaction and pain points of the situation before, during, and after her Art Street visit, which provided me with ideas for potential design solutions to bridge their communication gap.
IDEATE DESIGN SOLUTION
Reframe the user Insights into HMW questions
INDIRECT COMPETITOR RESEARCH
How did I approach the multiple questions?
I returned to the research process to conduct further research for actionable solutions based on the HMW questions. 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. I then took two approaches — a museum concept and a messenger concept.
Determine the most potential features
With the result of feature research in hand, I used the MoSCow framework to measure the impact and feasibility of the features to improve Jihee’s journey. 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. Considering the given timeline, other essential features were also included.
Content Based on the Visitors’ Needs
Since the decision led me to design an information screen page for the market's general information, I needed to create an IA map to arrange the full scope of content for practical navigation components and ease of use for Art Street users. The AI map below illustrates a structure of all the content and call-to-action buttons that help the users navigate through what information they will be given.
The main AI experience flow for the visitors
Reflecting Jihee’s journey that ultimately aims to communicate with the artist for inquiries, I mapped the detailed steps based on her real decison points and actions, starting from discovering art to directly contact to an absent artist.
DIGITAL PROTOTYPES
The initial concept applied with visual and information hierarchy.
BREAKDOWN OF THE ITERATIONS
How was the concept enhanced after the 2 rounds of user testing?
I conducted 2 rounds of user testing with the survey participants. I then found 3 types of issues regarding usability, accessibility and hierarchy for the product. I incorporated the user feedback into all the screens to improve the accessibility and usability issues. This was the most challenging because I had to go through numerous revisions and conduct additional visual research for a better interface.
VISUAL DESIGN
The style guide
REFLECTION
What I learned
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.
Next steps
- Design onboarding experience for the AI scanning feature
- Think about a chatbot system for the artists to send instant responses
- Create a scheduling system for the artists to have effective time management
Start with a concrete project plan.
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