Artsy Mobile App Redesign

Implementing new features to reach a younger demographic

Setting the Scene

  • I was part of a project through General Assembly to redesign Artsy’s mobile app.

    Artsy is the leading marketplace to discover, buy, and sell fine art, but has not yet successfully tapped into the up-and-coming class of millennial buyers.

  • Artsy sees around 2.5 million users every month and, remarkably, the average transaction distance carried out for orders through Artsy is 3,000 miles, the highest average of any website on the internet. Despite these impressive numbers, Artsy stakeholders are aware that they have yet to reach an important art buying audience: millennials.

  • Art consumers need a better way to engage with art & artists they like, to feel a connection to their local art community, and to find art within their budgets so that they can successfully purchase art they want.

“What’s growing the fastest is an emerging class of millennial buyers. They just want one app where they can find things based on their preferences and buy with a simple click. That’s exactly what Artsy is.”
— Carter Cleveland, Artsy Founder

Research

After conducting and synthesizing user interviews, our group developed a primary and secondary persona to keep in mind when developing potential solutions.

Meet the Users

While Jackie and Mike are very distinct, they still share many motivators and pain points that helped us zero in on what our solution should focus on.

Competitor Feature Analysis

Now that we had an idea of our target audience’s primary motivators and pain points, we analyzed a mix of direct and indirect competitors to determine what similar features and experiences look like on other sites.

Though we looked at a very long list of features, based on our initial research, the 5 shown above are the ones we felt presented the biggest gaps on Artsy’s site and ones we wanted to try addressing with our solution.

 

Ideate

Based on what we discovered with our research, we focused on five key missing features, listed below in order of priority.

  1. Price sorting

  2. Online shopping cart

  3. Guest browsing and purchasing

  4. Art guidance/style finding quiz

  5. Local event/show finder

Design Studio & Wireflows

We held a design studio to come up with various solutions. When evaluating Artsy’s existing site, one user remarked that they’d taken all the fun out of art exploration online.

We used this as our north star when ideating - how could we make art exploration fun again?

Making Art More Accessible

In addition to adding in the capability to sort art by price, we wanted to make it easier for anyone to browse and purchase art, member or not.

Making Art Exploration More Fun

To bring joy back to art exploration, we wanted to make browsing easier for people new to the art world and increase opportunities for connection through adding in the local event/show finder.

Usability Testing

After further fleshing out our wireframes, we developed and tested a mid-fidelity prototype with 14 users. We uncovered a couple of insights from our usability testing to further explore in our high-fidelity design.

  • We underestimated just how effective a hamburger menu could be. A majority of our users directly went to the hamburger menu first to navigate the site, which was something we overlooked in our original design.

  • Although users liked the idea of being shown a curated feed of art based on their answers to a few questions, they did not understand that this is what the ‘Need Guidance?’ button would take them to.

We asked users to imagine they weren’t sure what kind of art they were interested in and wanted Artsy’s help finding things. Only 54% chose the ‘Need Guidance’ CTA on our home screen. Nearly a third of our users abandoned the task altogether, making it clear that this feature was not accomplishing what we intended.

The Solution

After validating our Mid-Fidelity prototype, we made iterations to our design and moved into the High-Fidelity phase that addressed users’ additional concerns.

  • Prioritization of filters: We conducted a card sort to determine what filters were most important to people. The results were very clear: price, style, and size were priorities for everyone, so we adjusted the filter menu accordingly. 

  • Updated hamburger menu: We updated the menu to include links directly to artists, artwork, and local events. 

  • Rethinking the curated feed: Since ‘need guidance?’ wasn’t clear to users, we changed both the language we used to describe it and its placement on the site. Now, when users visit Artsy for the first time, they will be prompted with a pop-up encouraging them to find their art style, or they can simply opt-out and revisit it later if they’d like.

 

Next Steps

If we were able to continue working on this class project, we would have liked to conduct another round of usability testing to continue iterating on our design to address specific concerns. Some of the biggest questions we would like to answer with that testing are:

  • Did these changes directly lead to an increase of sales? Did the business see more conversions from their target demographic?

  • Are users taking advantage of this feature? Are they finding it helpful? Do users find the pop-up intrusive or are they happy to be prompted?

  • Is the menu leading users to their intended path of exploration? Is it succinct enough or could it be further refined?

Next

Shuk Design and Onboarding [Coming Soon]