ARTFUSE
Artfuse is a professional social media platform to empower artists and designers.
As a UX/UI and creative strategy specialist at Artfuse. I conducted research to narrow down the target user group, validate hypotheses, and uncover design opportunities. I also developed mockups and interactive prototypes with Figma, InVision, and HTML/CSS for the platform.
Intro
Vision
When I joined Artfuse, the team already had a general idea of what they wanted to build and the general target users.
They wanted to create a professional social media platform for artists and designers to satisfy their collaboration, professional development, and client outreach needs.
One of the first things I did when I began working with this team was creating a research plan to validate their hypothesis to uncover design opportunities and narrow down the target user group.
Research
Hypothesis
There was a need for a professional social media network that helps artists/creators with collaboration, professional development, and client outreach.
Competitive Analysis
Many designers used Dribbble, Behance, and Coroloft, but no platforms were designated for visual and performance artists. More importantly, no platform served multiple art/design disciplines.
Survey Says...
I wanted to learn more about how artists/designers use social media for their professional development, what they like/dislike the most about the existing platforms, and their general professional experience.
From the 42 responses I received, most performers, artists, and designers expressed that they lack essential business and project management knowledge. It was especially apparent among artists/designers with 1-3 years of experience.
Interview
I interviewed artists/designers with varying amounts of experience to discover how their careers had been, what they enjoyed the most, and what’s the biggest challenge they have experienced.
I found that many are dissatisfied with the industry’s business practices. Many artists and musicians needed to go through gallery/agent/streaming platforms to profit from their work, and they would often only receive a small portion of the profit.
Freelance artists’/designers’ workflows were deeply fragmented. They had to use many communication tools to communicate expectations, share updates, and manage client relationships.
I can barely see what casting opportunities are out there; I have to go through my agent to land on any job.
I would love to have someone manage the [exhibition] process, but at the same time, I would feel exploited if someone takes over completely.
I use email chains or even Instagram to communicate with my clients. Sometimes it’s all over the place, but I have learned how to manage it.
Insight
Lack of Transparency in the Works’ Values
Artists and designers rarely had a clear understanding of the profit galleries and agents gain from their work.
Lack of Essential Professional Skills
Emerging artists and designers often lacked essential professional skills like legal, business, and project management.
Freelance Workflow is Deeply Fragmented
They needed to use multiple platforms and communication channels for a single project.
Research Recap
Artists/designers are unsatisfied with existing social media platforms. They often need assistance on the legal and aspects of being a freelancer. Moreover, their freelance workflow is spread throughout multiple platforms, often causing miscommunication and unmet expectations.
Challenge
- How to empower independent artists/designers?
- How to assist them throughout their freelance journey?
- How to encourage them to interact with one another on the platform?
Solution
Feature
We envisioned Artfuse as the central hub for artists/designers’ professional online interactions, similar to LinkedIn but designed specifically for artists/designers.
- Connect, collaborate, communicate with other stakeholders all in one place.
- Customize their profile pages to showcase their individualities
- Utilize the project management tool to navigate the freelance process.
Experience Design
I began mapping out the structure of the platform, focusing on the four main pages:
- Project Dashboard - where users can manage their projects all in one place
- Profile Page - where users can customize their profile page to showcase past projects and individuality
- Job Page - where users can find potential freelance opportunities,
- Newsfeed Page - users can see the art/design from other artists/design and interact with them.
We decided to emphasize artists'/designers’ works and keep the front page clutter-free.
Feedback
Usability Testing
We began conducting usability testing with paper prototypes, and with InVision interactive prototypes later on. We focused on three main interaction loops:
- Starting a new project in the dashboard
- Customizing profile page
- Discovering and engaging with new artists/designers.
We realized the front page needs to accommodate different formats of works, so we made the tiles more dynamic to fit the works from a wide range of art/design disciplines.
Final
Front Page
The page displays projects with different levels of emphasis.
The page features the most popular and most liked works in different categories.
Users can hover over each project card to see the number of likes, views, and comments. The modal provides detailed project information: comments, larger images, the creator’s information, and a button to message the creator.
Profile
From the research, I found that users have personal websites to showcase their individuality, so we made sure users can customize their pages to do so.
We implemented the profile page customization feature to eliminate the need for personal websites. Users can customize the size of the project card. In addition, Artfuse supports file formats such as gif, video, and text to accommodate different types of content.
Project Dashboard
Communications, contract templates, updates, milestones, and other tools are all in one place to help users manage their projects.
The dashboard supports tools like Google Docs, Google Drive, and PDF viewer to keep all the documents in one place and consolidate communication channels.
Improvement
At this stage, we were ready to take this project to startup competitions and incubators. We had a series of discussions with our mentors and users to understand how to improve the design and the business to be more attractive to the investors.
It should be a lot prettier
You should also understand how other stakeholders like galleries, booking agents, or labels can utilize this platform.
Can I play my song on my profile page?
We realized the customizable profile page could not truly replace the creator’s need for a personal page. Therefore, we abandoned it for a uniform card system to ensure a consistent experience throughout the platform.
Also, we decided to focus on how we can further empower the artists/designers and developed different tools/features that can help them market their works and reach out to clients.
Retrospective
What Now?
The team went on a short COVID hiatus to focus on a side project that helps independent artists during the pandemic. We are currently assembling an in-house development team to move this platform out of the MVP stage.
What I Would Do Differently?
Know my audience.
When I presented my design, I assumed that as long as the design is user-focused backed with research, I would persuade my team or panels of judges. But I forgot to consider them the users of my presentation.
Keep users in mind throughout different stages of design.
Sometimes, the team came up with a seemingly innovative feature and got excited. It would be much later that I remember to validate if the feature can benefit them.
Validate product concept.
We should’ve validated the solution early on. We understood the problem from the user research, but we didn’t know if our solution was the right one.