INTERACTIVE DIGITAL ART GALLERY
'A Spiral World.'
Used with permission of the artist.
THE PROBLEM
Digital artist Diego Porres doesn't feel like the available websites for digital art shared his vision and values for showcasing his creations.
MY ROLE
My role was to conduct user research and use those insights to inform and create a design of a digital art gallery website.
RESEARCH PROCESS
The first questions to be answered are who are digital art users and what do they enjoy about the current landscape of digital art websites? What problems are there to solve? To answer this question, I performed foundational research. I planned to do three phases.
Session I - a 20 minute structured interview
Session II- a 60 minute contextual interview (with select participants) to identify user pain points of selected digital art websites.
Session III- a ten minute contextual interview with the client's digital art as it is presented now.
I created a screener to filter qualified participants. For this particular project, I sought to interview five participants. I found a small informative study posted on the website medium by Kat Mustatea that served as secondary research I could compare my research with.
Screener questions to select qualified participants.
PARTICIPANT MANAGMENT
For participant management, I used www.userinterviews.com/. Participants could self select for the interview. I asked artists to tweet a link. I spoke with people in digital art fan groups on social media, and I shared the link with my network. I created a screener to find a representitive population sample. I used the results of the screener to select qualified applicants. I also collected data from the screener itself to gain insights.
To reduce bias, I examined my own preconceptions about digital art and ensured I asked open ended questions, took detail notes, and monitored my tone and body language during interviews.
Informed consent
Each participant was informed about the study and signed a consent form. I wanted to ensure compliance with user data for this project. I coordinated with the qualifed partipants via email and conducted the interviews over Zoom. I also added a small incentive for each session managed through www.userinterviews.com for participation.
Documenting Interviews
For this project I used a combination of audio recordings, transcriptions, and detailed notes.
Used with permission*
Contextual Interview Phase II
Identifying user pain points remotely in the current landscape of digital art websites using Zoom.
Contextual Interview Phase III
Understanding the user pain points of how art is presently presented.
[in progress]
User Persona
GAINING USER INSIGHTS
From the qualitative research, I identified two target user groups that best represented the target audience of the website. I created personas for these groups. The user groups were-
30-40-Year-old digital art collectors
Users who purchased digital art with Tezos.
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Using empathy maps to empathize with the user and define the problems they are facing.
GENERATING IDEAS
First ideation session with the artist
ROADMAP
Define
Create user journeys and craft problem statements
Ideate
Generate human centered ideas
Prototype
Wireframe by sketches by hand and prototyping using Figma.
Design
Design, while always testing and iterating along the way.
It's important to collect and synthesize enough data before beginning the design process. At this stage, I have conducted interviews and began to have user insights. I have even generated some ideas for interactiveness using those insights that the artist is very excited about. I will follow a design thinking road map for the completion of this project in line with the Google UX Design Professional Certificate. Check back for updates.
TEACH ALL OVER THE WORLD
visit www.teachallovertheworld.com
MY ROLE
Why is there always a paywall to access international education jobs? Teachers have a notoriously humble salary, so why make them pay to find a job? In 2018, I created an online space for teachers to access verified jobs in far-off places. Over the years there have been several iterations and services have been extended to include a blog and a consulting page.
THE WEBSITE
The website (www.teachallovertheworld.com) is powered by WordPress, specifically Workscout core, and WP jobs manager. I have a fundamental understanding of HTML, but have relied on page builders such as WP bakery for design. I began creating this project in 2018, since then I've learned a lot. Read about the website, research, and a reflection about what I have learned below.
Search Jobs by Category
Post Jobs
Apply for Jobs
Blog
Visitors can browse jobs/ post jobs/ create an account to bookmark/ send applications/ peruse the blog for application strategies.
RESEARCH
Surveys are a quick and inexpensive tool to gain insights about our users. I used www.surveymonkey.com's survey tools and analytics to answer the questions ' How do users feel about our website?' and 'What do users want to learn from us?'.
In research, it's important to be creative with questioning to reduce bias and read between the lines in participant answers. Questions such as "How likely are you to recommend" helped us learn how people felt about the site, and then we could dig into the painpoints from the detractors.
In this case, we can identify some technical pain points that were affecting the user experience. Such as 'page loading too slowly'.
We wanted to know "What do educators want to learn from us?" We used this knowledge to develop consulting flows on the most popular topics.
@teachallovertheworld on Instagram
REFLECTION
Creating and managing my first website over the past years has been a very educational experience. It has been humbling and given me a lot of respect for entrepreneurs and designers. It takes a lot of grit, effort, and perseverance to realize a vision.
The design from The Google UX Professional Design Course has opened up my eyes to the science of user-centered design, and I'm hungry to learn more. It has also made me reflect on the ways I can make this website and it's services more user-centered, accessible, and equitable for all.
I'm busy getting starting
Thanks for checking out my projects, check back for updates!