1. SUMMARY
2. RESEARCH
3. EXPLORATIONS
4. PROTOTYPES
5. SOLUTION
ARTRIUM
ARTRIUM
3 MINUTE READ
CONTRIBUTION
UX Research
UX Design
Content Writing
Project Management
LENGTH
6 weeks
YEAR
2022
CONTEXT
academic project
TEAMMATE
UX Research
UX Design
Content Writing
Project Management
LENGTH
6 weeks
YEAR
2022
CONTEXT
academic project
TEAMMATE
Justin Yu
How might we encourage users to attend local art events by better facilitating their discovery to shed light on Vancouver’s art scene?
THE SOLUTION
Artrium is a centralized event finder that shows users all art-related events and activities in Vancouver. It makes users aware of local art events and encourages them to attend art events.
MY IMPACT
I led the research, identified key insights, and directed the strategy.
RESEARCH
I began my research by reading over 20 articles, op-eds, documents, etc., about art in Vancouver to gain some context about the subject at hand. Subsequently, I interviewed three practicing artists and three art enthusiasts in Vancouver. I asked about their experiences with their participation in art in Vancouver and their perspectives on the visibility and accessibility of art in Vancouver.
FINDINGS
- I realized that Vancouver artists' problems are largely bureaucratic and beyond this project's scope (frankly, they cannot be solved through an app).
- Meanwhile, art enthusiasts sporadically receive information about art events in Vancouver on social media; to an extent, the visibility of art events depends on social media algorithms.
- As a result, certain types of art get more visibility than others, often drowning out art from smaller artists.
EXPLORATIONS
Per my research, I focused on bridging the gap between art and its enthusiasts in Vancouver through a gamified event-finding experience. My primary goal was to help art enthusiasts discover and attend art events. For this project, I define "art events" as encompassing all art-related activities such as exhibitions, workshops, festivals, etc.)
PROTOTYPES
I established three key features necessary to the product to encourage users to participate: gamified exploration, a robust item (event)- finding system, and a reward system. The gamified experience and the reward system will incentivize event attendance, while the event-finding system will inform users about local events.
For the first iterations of Artrium, I drew inspiration from the mechanics of geocaching and Pokemon Go. I consider Geocaching and Pokemon Go great examples of products that use digital interfaces to facilitate real-life discovery. I designed Artrium's features using principles that make Pokemon Go a great game.
1. Motivating Uncertainty: to make users want something both unknown yet familiar.
2. Ikea Effect: high value placed on items that required high effort to obtain
3. Endowment Effect: high value placed on items we feel we own
4. Zeigarnik Effect: desire of completeness and resolution
USER TESTING
After conducting some user testing, the target users revealed that:
- While the gamified experience seemed fun, they will most likely not be using this feature
- The event-discovery tool is the most attractive feature
- Regarding art events, key deciding factors for whether someone will attend depends on TIME, PLACE, and TYPE of event.
THE SOLUTION
Artrium seeks to make users aware of art events and encourage them to attend them. Below is the promotional video for Artrium, which I wrote, produced, and directed. The video briefly highlights Artium's product goals and how its key features address these.
MAKE AWARE
I used information architecture principles to guide the user experience in order to inform users about current and upcoming art events in Vancouver. Artrium's event discovery features heavily consider different users' information needs.
ENCOURAGE
After making users aware of art events, Artrium hopes to encourage them to attend those art events through digital incentives, sociality, and logistics.