App Design

Artistory

Aristory is an artist biography app for art galleries that brings more life and interactivity to the art gallery experience.

Artistory

An app for arists to tell their stories.

The Problem

For the last decade, social media has been taking the place of art galleries and museums; a steady decline in yearly attendance has been recorded for museums since 2002, and Covid caused an even greater delcine which has lasted through 2022.

The gallery experience is failing compared to social media and interactive exhibitions like Suberblue Miami. Something needs to be added to the experience to bring it up to par.

Galleries need a fun way for guests to connect to the artists.

The Solution

For visitors who are looking to have a memorable experience,  interactive, animated biographies would work well to capture their attention and serve as a way to integrate technology into the gallery experience.

Many artists love sharing their process work and viewers love getting a look into the artists process. It helps to teach potential aritsts and gives clients a window into the work that goes into their comissions. Integrating this into existing galleries could be a way to boost interactivity and attendance as well.

So how do we reinvent and bring life to the art gallery experience in a way that is friendly to both artists and consumers?

User Research

Research began with interviews. I interviewed both artists and consumers. While the interview pool was smaller than is ideal, I came away with a lot of useful information that diffrered from my personal views.

The artist interviews revealed a desire to share their process to help people understand the amount of work that goes into their art, a grudge against the need for social media, and percieved exclusionism from art galleries.

The consumer interviews revealed that visiting galleries as well as social media use both were done to enjoy art for what it is, that art being online makes it very accessible to them, and that something traditional galleries lack is insight into the artist.

I then consolidated the information from the interviews into user stories and problem statements.

By sharing more information about themselves and their art, artists and gallery visitors can connect without relying on gallery employees. The information needs to be both informative and fun to use so that people actually read it. It should not be a struggle to find the specific information they’re interested in.

These were then developed into user personas that encompased both artists and gallery visitors.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive audit revealed some gaps and opportunities in the art gallery space that Artistory could capitalize on.

• Fun, interactive bios - can be done with something as simple as scroll animations
  
• Bring that custom, storytelling tone of voice into the art space bios, not just gallery walls or one biography app
  
• Bring the process shots of art station into other artist bios to add more substance to technique sections 

User Journey

The first path I decided to explore was Noah's because it captures the essence of the app according to our problem statement: 

"Our Artist Bio Mobile App will let users view digital “About the Artist” profiles  which will affect gallery visitors who want to learn more about/connect with an artist whose work they like by providing a platform for more creative, story based, and interactive profiles compared to traditional gallery plaques. We will measure effectiveness by tracking user comments and purchases."

Visual Design

The next step was to deevlop the visual style and mood of the app. I wanted it to feel contemporary and inviting.

Brand Guidelines

Then I developed some basic brand guidelines to follow for the visual design of the app. The display font is a playful serif font and the Ui follows contemporary design trends.

App Design

The login screen is the first thing new visitors will see. I wanted it to really capture what the moodboard set as the app's vision.

The next important part of the app was the intro to the artists page. This sets the tone for the rest of the biography that follows. In this case, it uses Artistorys brand colors, however on the artists side various color and style templates will be offered.

The development of the actaul interactive biography was the most important part of the design process. It took several attempts to capture the feel I wanted, though it is still limited due to Figma's prototyping capabilities.

After a usability study, I changed all interactions to on drag and added "swipe to continue" as well as users defaulted to this rather than tapping, and the navigation was not intuitive.

The artists page has to servve as a portfolio with the bio acting almost as a resume. This is also where many social media interactions occur, so you can contact and follow the artist here. They have control over their featured work.

The art page is an additional place for social media interactions to occur. The art has to be showcased as well as the thought process behind it to build connections with the viewer.

The process page carries styles over from the bio, and uses videos or images to share the artists creative process. After testing the prototype, I added the arrow as a visual queue to swipe to the side.

Figma Prototype

Using Figma I created a minimum viable prototype just to get the essence of the app in motion and show some functionality. There are two flows shown. The second was added aftera round of suer testing that discovered users wanted an easier way to access the QR code scanner.

Next Steps

• Redevelop the prototype in protopie or after effects due to figma limitations. I experimented with Jitter but wasn't quite able to get the results I wanted for the biography section.
  
• Develop additional user flows, especailly from the aritsts side to demonstrate potential features like color and animation templates for the biography.