As an entry level UI/UX designer, I found my passion in this field three years ago and started to treat it as my professional field. After that, I was applying for a MFA degree a year ago and now I am trying to find a related job. I personally encountered some frustrating moments during the process. For example, I really want to know someone in the same field as me that can give me some suggestions or advice on career development and learning path. I also expect someone to review and critique my projects and portfolio so that I can be more confident about my work and more competitive in the market. I tried to solve my problems through platforms like Behance, Linkedin and Reddit, however, art and design are a very small branch of them and I cannot find enough resources and information. I am at a loss and sometimes feel lonely during the process of pursuing my dream as a designer.

Therefore I was thinking about creating a communication platform especially for student and entry level artists. They are encouraged to interact with each other by posting and answering their confusions and thoughts encountered in career development and gaining peer critique of their artwork.

Questionnaire

I created a google form and invited 25 people to do this survey. They are all art-related majors, some of them have official working experience while others are currently undergraduate or graduate students.

Selected questionnaire results

From the survey, I found that my personal experience and feeling is actually a common problem for all kinds of artists. Most of the artists believe that it is harder for them to get resources in career development and learning path compared with other more popular majors. Also, most student artists/ entry level artists are not that confident about their portfolios and they have the desire to find more resources or suggestions from others in the same field as them.

Interview

I conducted a 20mins interview with 5 of my friends and former colleagues. These interviewees came from different age ranges, gender and art backgrounds, from students to employees, from native people to foreigners.

Persona

Based on the survey and interview results, I build two personas.

Problem Framing

By digging into the pain points of personas, I framed the main problems of my users.

Restructure Design Statement

I believe that creates a communication platform for student and entry-level artists to gain peer critique of their artwork, get rich resources to solve their confusions and questions, and join various groups to interact with like-minded people will help them adapt to the atmosphere of debates and critique and finally be confident with their work.

Key Features

Based on all the research and analysis, I concluded with four key features.

User Flow

According to the key features, I made several user flows align with each key feature by using the shorthand method.

User Stories

Moving forward, I created a set of user stories. This helped me delineate the features and abilities of the product.

DESIGN PROCESS

Wireframes

Based on the guideline of user stories and user flows, I created a low fidelity wireframe.

Critique: After receiving helpful feedback from my peers, I realized that the app is a little bit overwhelming because it covers too many aspects. I need to narrow it down. They also pointed out the direct feedback function (critique & asking questions) is the most outstanding and innovative part of the app. Therefore, I decided to focus strongly on the direct feedback part and deleted the long-form writing/blogging function.

High fidelity Prototype

After implementing the feedback I received about wireframes, I designed a high fidelity prototype.

Hi-fi prototype(sign up process)

Hi-fi prototype(key features screen)

TESTING PROCESS

Heuristic Evaluation

I invited 5 evaluators to give a heuristic evaluation of the prototype. Each evaluator individually went through the interface twice and compared them with Jakob’s 10 Usability Heuristics. Below are the results and solutions.

#1:Voliate Visibility of system status

Since I have multi-step questions when signing up, users would feel confused and had no idea about how long the sign-up process is. Therefore, I added a stepper component as the visual cue to keep users informed about the current status.

Revised sign up process

#2:Voliate Recognition rather than recall

Another feedback I got was adding loading and confirmation status. Therefore I add the loading and confirmation screen in “posting your work”, “creating a group” and “ask a question” function.

#3 Voliate Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors

One of the evaluators mentioned that my app is lacking error messages. Therefore, I used bold, red text to indicate errors to users.

Thank you for reading :)

© Designed by Yucheng Hang