MÉTIER, a personal project, is an art gallery app designed to make buying art online easy and transparent with pricing shown upfront.
Features included in this app include being able to sort by genre or artist; being able to click on paintings for additional information, as well as see the current bids made upfront. When the user is ready to check out their is a cart, payment information, and confirmation page available.
As this was a personal project, my role in this included every design, research, and motion graphic component from start to finish. Beginning at conducting user research, to organizing that research, creating personas, defining the problem, sketching out wireframes, making prototypes, and conducting usability testing.
A common problem among art galleries is users feeling as though operators are elitists and snobbish. Pricing among art pieces are often hidden, so people are forced to ask the host/dealer for pricing. A pain point for art gallery goers is feeling embarrassed to ask for the price, in the event that they couldn't afford the art. Another pain point is thinking the host would look down on them, "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".
Due to limited funds for this project my research began with primary and secondary sources. I read through multiple articles from art gallery websites to get an idea of problems that they and their customer base are facing.
Through my research I discovered that users want transparent pricing and the ability to buy art online. Given this information I thought an art gallery app where pricing was transparent and you could buy art online was a good solution.
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Five interviews were conducted to determine if an art gallery app would be of interest to people who wanted to expand on their art collection. I specifically interviewed artists and people involved with design. Common themes were users who didn't live close to art galleries, so it was inconvenient to travel to one. Participants said they would use an art gallery app.
To help understand and define my users I created user personas that summarized my findings from my research and Interviews.
“Our Art Gallery App (Métier) will let users buy art online, get in depth information on art, and have transparent pricing. This will affect artists who want to sell art online through a gallery and art goers who want to buy art easier. We will measure effectiveness by analyzing the increase of art purchases through the app, user comments, and frequency of App use”
I conducted competitive audits from other art gallery websites such as Artsy, Artlogic, and the Artling.
I compared what unique value the company brings, what leg up do they have over other companies, and potential drawbacks. I also made comparisons of similarities they all had, apparent differences, possible missed opportunities, and key things I've learned from this audit.
I learned that a lot of these gallery websites were expensive for the artist selling art, as well as the user buying the art. I also learned that sometimes the information of the paintings or pricing wasn't transparent.
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I conducted an observational study in which I gave my participant certain tasks to complete. Throughout the interview I wrote notes of quotes or anything noteworthy as they went through my app.
Some key elements I changed from user input was I changed the dissolve effect to instant for page transition. I made it so that clicking on the paintings expanded the image. I took away the marble design from the buy buttons and changed it with a solid green to make the call to action more apparent. I added shadow to all the text on the buttons and made the text bigger to make it more visible. Lastly, I made the payment confirmation a popup so that there would be less pages and clicking involved.
"I wish if I clicked on the painting it would expand"
"I don't like the dissolve effect when going page to page"
"The marble on the buy buttons is a bit distracting"
In addition to creating a user friendly app, I created a responsive website. Here I was able to take advantage of the vast amount of space that comes with desktop websites. In addition to everything the app offered, I included more specific searches such as location, medium, and subject matter. I also was able to showcase more of what the artist's collection consisted of.
I think the biggest take away from this case study was that good design does not equate to good user friendliness, or rather the importance of designing for your users rather than for other designers. One example of this was how I used marble on the buy buttons, but the user I interviewed found it distracting, hard to read, and was unsure if it even was a buy button. I fixed this after the interview, furthermore for future designs I will focus more on the user and incorporate a "less is more" mindset.