Edward EG

Artist Center

How might we reimagine our artist-facing extranet to manage inventory and communicate actions regarding artwork?
E-commerce

Overview

The Artist Center is an extranet for admins and artists at Artful Home to apply, manage, and review artwork for curated art collections.

Some of the critical capabilities include, but are not limited to, uploading photos of artwork, collecting product information, completing work orders, managing inventory, making payments, and communicating with Artful Home merchandisers for customer-facing operations.

Problem
Inconsisent user interfaces Our interface feels like various platforms, which only creates more confusion for our users to navigate and take action.
Limited automation It's a manual process to maintain artwork and communicate updates between customers and artists for fulfilling large orders.
Outcome
Unified visual language The user interface is more cohesive and no longer feels like five different platforms.
Improved guidance for new products We provided more guidance to artists on artwork requirements and descriptions to include in product pages.
Role Graphic Designer (UI Designer)
Duration 2-months
Contributions user research, user design
Platform Web

Approach

By partnering closely with customer service and apparel and decor merchandisers, we coordinated five studio visits varying in apparel, jewelry, glass blowing, and furniture by partnering closely with customer service and apparel and decor merchandisers.

Methodology

I interviewed and observed artists and their workflows with the Artist Center to inform a service blueprint to help shape our future experience.

User Flow
User persona

Christine Entrepreneur

"I design for the woman who does not subscribe to fashion trends."

52 years old

Illinois

Fashion Designer

Christine launched her first official clothing line right after college, securing several local boutiques that appreciated her exceptional craftsmanship and unique point of view. Christine’s work is in 200+ stores across the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
  • To distribute access to her accounts with her Director of Production and Director of Sales & Operations.
  • To grow her apparel brand and ensure quality and customer satisfaction.
  • To streamline her product fulfillment process by creating bulk edits for when a new product line is ready.
  • Coordinates with Artful Home CEO and Merchandisers for exclusive apparel collections.
  • Ships product to Artful Home for photoshoots.
  • Relies on assistants to complete fulfillment of orders.
  • The manual process to duplicate products for different colors or patterns.
  • Multiple emails for new orders instead of creating reports to fulfill.
  • The Artist Center needs to be optimized to allow the completion of orders on the iPad.

Clark Builder

"My furniture is inspired by the clean lines of the Shaker form, allowing the highly figured domestic and exotic woods I use to be the focal point."

67 years old

Wisconsin

Woodworker

Clark is a self-taught woodworker with a deep respect for the furniture craftsmen of the 17th and 18th centuries. His profound passion for woodwork stemmed when he married his wife and decided to make bedroom furniture instead of purchasing.
  • To have his spouse be able to help him operate his studio by accepting new orders for him to build.
  • To spend more time designing and creating then working on admin tech updates like uploading new images.
  • To generate more sales.
  • Freight shipping of furniture for photoshoots for catalog and website.
  • Upload alternate images of furniture details.
  • Attend art shows and promote artwork that is available at artfulhome.com.
  • Unable to create a copy of a similar product and modify details about the material.
  • Unclear on what all the different colored buttons mean.
  • Doesn’t know how to format images to upload to be high resolution for print.

Constraint

While we learned a lot about our artist users on studio visits, unfortunately many of the requests being made could not immediately be prioritized due to sustaining operations of our e-commerce experience.

Critical Business support and operations are the priority over supporting experience enhancements. When design capacity became available to support enhancements, technology partners were unavailable as their focus was primarily on the platform stability of our e-commerce site and content management system.

Ideation

Our visual language needed a cohesive look and feel by revisiting our styling for Bootstrap.

Unified Visual Language Color tokens, inputs, buttons, typography, and other reusable components

Features

One of our biggest opportunities was enabling artists and their teams to gain efficiency. In many scenarios, consistency in UI was critical to reduce user confusion about the placement of actions hiding features.
Review your orders Filter produce orders to determine the following shipment action.
Nested information View details without leaving orders.
Application trackers Apply for new curated collections or to be featured in the catalog.

Key screens

Sell your artwork Starting point for all new and returning artists.
Jury application Select application type.
Artist History Artist exhibitions, awards, and collections.
Upload Artwork Additional alternative product images.
Artist Dashboard Artist communications and pending action items.
Artist inventory Update shipping and production times for artwork.
Manage your orders Bulk actions for updating multiple orders.
Artist inventory Update shipping and production times for artwork.

Takeaway

While I transitioned roles to pursue another opportunity, this experience taught me a lot about navigating frameworks with content management system and other software as a service (SAAS) integrations.
Lessons learned
  • Meet your users where they are in their workflow and prioritize usability and mobility.
  • Invest in developing relationships with customer service and they share insights and the voice of the customer.
  • Invest in developing relationships with customer service and they share insights and the voice of the customer.
Some potential next steps
  • Conduct more extensive research on more common tasks artists and their teams are working on.
  • Continue to ideate on responsive design for complex workflows for artists on the go.
  • Create more guides for artists to improve photography for products in print catalog and retail pages.

View all work

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