Project Overview
The problem
During the pandemic period, potential buyers can't commute to a different country for auction and collect artwork as usual anymore.
The goal
The gallery is minimalist, and modern, and features a high-tech simulated Gallery from a distance. Offering both online and offline purchases. Their speciality collection can be made to auction worldwide on their app regularly. This app inspired buyers to seek out VV Gallery on the App and try to bid on the auction for the unique collection during the pandemic period.
The Product
VV Gallery is an local Art store with locations in Tokyo, Japan. It aims to serve world buyer with japanese art. Their art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime.
Excepting Outcome
The app helps users solve the problem with distance auction events, save money and time for travelling, make artwork auctions more effective and solve the worldwide issue which brings by pandemics.
Jump to Final Design arrow_downwardUser Reseach
Summary
I conducted interview and created empath maps to understand the user I’m designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified through research was working in design filed who often seeking artworks for their customer. This user group confirmed initial assumption about VV Gallery’s customer, but research also revealed that time was not the only factor limiting users from working in design filed. Other user problem included interest, or challenges that make it difficult to buy the painting for personal collection.
The Pain Point
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1Time
Can’t arrange the schedule in two different place at the same time
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2Cost
It is expensive to travel all the time only looking for a piece of art.
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3Accessibility
Platform for galleries isn’t equipped with live auction technologies
Persona
User Journey Map
Goal: Attend an auction of a gallery where will provide her various art options to purchase.
Starting Design
Wireframes
Taking the time to draft several iterations of each screen of the app on paper ensured that the elements that made it to digital wireframes would be well-suited to address user pain points. For the home screen, I prioritized an easy browse process to help user find what they need.
Usability Study
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Round 1 findings
- Users want to search art work easily
- Users want to participant live auction
- Users want to reserve auction with reminder alarm
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Round 2 findings
- Users can’t easy access auction reservation page
- Users don’t know where to access live auction
- Users are confused with the feature of some button
Mockup Usability Study
The second usability study revealed frustration with the auction flow. The user can’t find the live auction platform from the home screen. To streamline this flow, I modified the bottom navigation icon to auction hammer. I also added auction paintings to each reservation card.
Accessibility considerations
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1
Used contrast colours for buttons and text to help the user better navigate the app.
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2
Insert one to two sentence summaries describing each accessibility consideration applied in your designs.
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3
Provided access to users who wanted to simulate artworks in users own place.
Final Design
Takeaways
What I learned
While designing the VV Gallery app, I learned that the fist ideas for the app are only the beginning of the process. User research, usability studies and user feedback influenced each interaction of the app’s design.
Next steps
- Conduct another round of usability to live auction screens to determine whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed.
- Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need.
- Tracking the usability status of current design.