Artistry

Student project at the University of Toronto

Empowering emerging artists to connect with local buyers and sell their work for fair prices
View Prototype

Timeline

4 months

Sept 2024 – Dec 2024

Collaborators

Kellie Hung

Robin Wang

Ryan Wong

Yi-Hsiu Shen

Role

Conducted secondary research on art buyer behaviours, audited competitors and interviewed 2/10 participants to refine the project scope

Distilled and analyzed data from 10 participants to uncover key insights

Facilitated ideation sessions to explore different perspectives, align on goals and prioritize impactful solutions

Designed the user flow and wireframes for artists listing artworks for auction

Applied user and expert feedback to revise the layout and structure of buyer-facing screens

Designed the user flow and wireframes for artists listing artworks for auction

Refined the design system to ensure consistency and scalability

Overview
Highlights
Insights
Target users
Conceptualize
Refine
Validate
Prototype
Reflect

Problem

It’s difficult for emerging artists to break into the art market because of financial burden, lack of visibility in a saturated space, and limited connections in the industry

Direction

How can emerging artists make deeper connections with their audience and art communities?
How can we increase the perceived value of emerging artists' work and encourage audiences to purchase them?

Challenge

Designing for two target users: artists and buyers, who may not always have aligning needs

Solution

A location-based digital art marketplace that facilitates connections between emerging artists and buyers within local communities

Highlight local artists

Artistry shows artworks by location, and encourages buyers to view artists near them.

We hope to illicit deeper connections with each piece by showing them one at a time. Buyers can absorb the work and its details, before moving on to the next. Artists are also encouraged to show process videos in their listings, so that buyers get better context for what goes into an art piece.

Insight

It’s hard for artists to gain exposure online.

Digital platforms make it easy for audiences to quickly scroll through an abundance of polished art work, which may devalue the art they see.

Book artwork viewings in-person

Buyers have the option to message artists or view artworks in person to learn more about their piece.

Insight

Artists enjoy a deeper, personalized connection with their audience

Bid on artworks, and view price break-downs

For one-of-a-kind pieces, market demand can help determine the value of products and increase buyers’ sense of scarcity.

Potential buyers can see the hours and cost of materials that go behind a piece of art, for a better understanding of what goes into the pricing

Artistry also encourages personal pickups and drop-offs of sold works to minimize the logistics and costs associated with shipping.

Insight

Emerging artists don’t know how they should price their products

Research Methods

Background Research

To identify and understand our secondary target user: art buyers

Competitive Audit

To identify unique selling points, gaps and opportunities of platforms that artists use to showcase and sell art pieces

11 digital showcasing platforms

10 digital selling platforms

4 traditional channels (e.g., art fairs, museums)

Interviews

To understand emerging artists’ motivations, needs and challenges behind creating, promoting and selling art

10 participant interviews

~30 minutes each

conducted on Zoom

Insights

Art is how I express myself

9/10 Participants

Artists shared their underlying motivations for creating art: it’s part of who they are and how they express themselves

“I think it's just a big part of my personality at this point… Helps me to define who I am every day…”

Art for others ≠ art for myself

8/10 Participants

In efforts to turn art into income, artists have found that creating profitable or popular art, may not align with art they enjoy creating.

Artists need to have some degree of personal freedom and creativity in how they create and showcase their art, in order to maintain their motivation for turning art into a career.

“It was getting less fun for me because I was making stuff that people wanted, and not what I wanted.”

Desire for connection

7/10 Participants

Artists shared how they value positive feedback, and making more personalized , intimate connections with their audience.

“(RE: Art fairs)...I get to interact with the customers directly, which is a rewarding experience, and like, they engage with both my work and me as a person.”

Yelling into the void

8/10 Participants

In efforts to turn art into income, artists have found that creating profitable or popular art, may not align with art they enjoy creating.

They need a sense of control and security, to see how their efforts translate into outcomes. They need to feel a sense of progress, in order to continue investing their time and effort into self-promotion.

“You spend all these hours making these videos and like you get like 70 views, you know? ... I just posted, like, a video couple of weeks ago. And I think I, like, barely got, like, 200 views... Like, this makes me not want to post even more.”

Art is devalued

7/10 Participants

Artists perceived a devaluation of their art due to lack of visibility in a saturated market (4/10), the rise of AI image generation (3/10) and the context lost when people view finished art pieces online (5/10).

Artists need recognition and appreciation for their work, both to satisfy their desire for connection and validation, and to enable them to charge higher prices for their work.

“...No matter how good your camera is, it’s very difficult to represent all the details, and especially something like 3 dimension into the 2 dimension, information lost, especially with some delicate artwork.”

How much do I charge?

5/10 Participants

In efforts to turn art into income, artists have found that creating profitable or popular art, may not align with art they enjoy creating.

Artists may need a deeper understanding of their audience, and how much they’re willing to pay before feeling confident in the prices they set.

“I did notice that I underpriced a lot of my things quite often. Just because I always thought that it would be embarrassing if it didn't sell out. So I will sell my original art piece for like 30 dollars, which is like ridiculous…"

Direct Competitors

An evaluation of our direct competitors’ unique selling points to help us determine what insights to act on, and what unique benefit we can offer.

Known for having niche, unique items, and access to a wide audience (who are often shopping for gifts)

Takes care of shipping logistics (Artists pay a flat rate)

Artists have freedom to list what they want, and can access a wide audience

Curated collections (Artists must be approved by the platform)

Defining the target users

The artist and the buyer

Cameron

Traditional Artist

“I want to sell my work at a fair price to someone who would appreciate it, but I can’t get much exposure online and have no idea how much I should charge.”

John

Art Lover on a Budget

"I want to find the perfect painting for my living room, but when I look at artwork online, I can’t visualize how it would look in real life."

Conceptualize

User Flow 1—Cameron lists an artwork for auction

After evaluating existing upload processes, we've deemed these as the necessary steps.

We plan to keep the user engaged by separating actions into 4 steps they can jump back and forth from. Users likely won't finish it in one sitting, and will have their progress saved if they exit.

This process guides artists on how to upload high quality content, improves their discoverability through relevant tags and helps them set a fair starting bid price with common formulas recommended for emerging artists.

Initial user flow—I decided on these steps after evaluating competing platforms’ artwork upload processes. The challenge was how to keep users engaged in the upload process despite the amount of steps required.

Initial lo-fi wireframes— Focusing on the “happy path”, my original intention was to reduce the amount of content per screen. However, this resulted in too many screens for the user to go through

Mid-fi wireframes—Multiple screens were consolidated into one to give users more freedom in the order of steps they want to complete and a more accurate expectation of what the process requires

User Flow 2— John books a viewing for Cameron's artwork, and places a bid

In the buyers’ perspective, this user flow was designed to showcase how Artistry guides John’s decision to place a bid on an artwork he likes

Initial user flow—Created by Robin Wang

Initial lo-fi wireframes— Created by Robin Wang

Mid-fi wireframes—Created by Robin Wang and Kellie Hung

Revisions

Feedback from Industry Experts

From product designers, consultants and researchers in the UX industry

2 rounds

2 experts per round

User-Testing

To identify user experience improvements at the mid-fidelity stage

1 round

5 testers per user flow

2 user flows tested

conducted in person

Major Revisions

Features for further validation

How would price transparency influence buyers’ purchasing decisions?

vs.

vs.

Would buyers be more willing to spend higher prices after understanding the effort and expenses that go into an art piece? Would buyers trust these metrics? How can we ensure artists are putting in accurate metrics?

How should artwork listings be displayed?

More user freedom, artwork exposure and comparison

vs.

Highlights artwork details and encourages a deeper connection with each piece

Prototype

Reflection

Expectations vs. reality

Our theory: Buyers may not understand what goes into an art piece and therefore, breaking down the price to customers (showing the time and effort that goes behind a piece) would increase their likelihood to bid.

We kept the entire pricing formula (that artists use to help them set a fair starting bid) visible to buyers to gauge their response.

The outcome: our user testers expressed distrust and confusion from seeing time spent, cost of materials and hourly wages artists set for themselves.

We realized that compared to other services like Airbnb (cleaning fees, etc.), these metrics may be more subjective easier to manipulate. We would also need a bigger sample size to understand how price breakdowns affect buyers’ likelihood to bid.

Perhaps it’s more productive to show an artist’s process in other ways, such as encouraging artists to upload process videos as part of their listing. 

Balancing the needs of two target users

Though our initial target audience was emerging artists, I advocated for the buyers’s needs as well. Buyers have a lot of freedom in what platforms they can access to buy art, and therefore, I thought it was crucial to address their goals to keep them on this platform.

Some considerations included: 

  • Artists getting flexibility to extend the bidding process vs. buyers wanting consistent schedules 
  • Buyers who prioritize the art itself over proximity vs. local artists seeking exposure through proximity (how would this affect the algorithm of listings presented to buyers? What filter options should there be?) 

5 team members are truly better than 1. Thank you to my team for expanding my perspective, motivating me to push the project further and most importantly, making the project so fun. Thank you as well to our instructors and industry experts who took the time to listen to our pitches, and provide their seasoned feedback!

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