Vellum is an app that allows NYC art students to buy, sell, and donate their unused art supplies in order for them to free up space in their apartments, buy art supplies at a lower price, and build a better community.
1. Synthesizing and Applying Research
There have been instances where we would have to backtrack a lot as we cross-referenced only a few aspects of our research to guide our design-decisions.
Organizing all of our data through an affinity map may have helped us utilize all of the data we collected in a holistic manner.
2. Storytelling through Presentations
We had this case study reviewed by other product designers, such as Sharon Yeun Kim! We learned that for our presentations, having a simplified or generalized version of our visualizations help a lot when telling the story of our development.
There is a lack of a centralized platform for NYC art students to easily buy, sell, or donate art supplies, resulting in inefficient disposal methods and wastage of reusable materials.
Creating a platform for students to trade, buy, and sell art supplies will reduce the amount of unused materials in students on and off-campus accommodations, thereby decreasing spatial congestion as measured by reduced storage space usage.
Survey
After identifying our problem, we wanted to learn the scope of our issue by conducting surveys with many different art students.We did this through Google Forms, and shared it in various online communities to get a diverse amount of input; Our questions came from a preliminary interview that we had with @frugaliciousmamas.
In total, there were 45 responses from 4 different NYC Art schools.
After our survey, we went into interviews to talk 1 on 1 with 7 students from different schools and majors to better understand the NYC art student experience.
This survey guided our design choices to ensure that we attained the goals that we had initially set when embarking this case study:
1. To create a mobile app that improves and "revolutionizes" the art supply buying experience for the everyday art student.
2. Make the platform peer 2 peer and by doing so, strengthen and build the art and design community in New York City.
3. Promote sustainability and reduce wastage of art supplies within the city.
User Personas
Based on our us, we were able to summarize our findings into three distinct user personas. Each persona embodies the collective goals, frustrations, and needs observed across our user base, providing a focused lens for our user research decisions.
Market Research
Our app seemed to have a lot of similarities with other apps, two main contenders being Facebook Marketplace and Depop.
To understand how we could differentiate our product and improve the current landscape, we chose to do a SWOT analysis of these contenders.
Our analysis concluded that enhancing user privacy and security is critical, addressing the deficiencies in existing apps' handling of sensitive information. Additionally, we will integrate a community-validated verification process to reinforce seller credibility and trust.
Our user personas represent a student who would primarily buy, another who sells, and another who wants community. By following these 3 flows, we created a cleaner base for our information architecture.
CHALLENGE : Deciding the most optimal composition for the home screen
We started off with sketches, loosely basing our UI off of apps that are currently being used frequently by Gen-Z, so that transitioning to this app would be easy.
We had 4 different iterations for what our home screen could look like, each having slight difference in navigation.
Menu Iteration - Solution
Lots of Preliminary User Testing
To aid our design choices, we conducted preliminary user tests on our peers, asking them to examine our wireframes and make suggestions as to what they liked and what they found uncomfortable or unintuitive.
By taking both the results of this user testing and reassessing the goals of our app, it became easier to develop the prototype of our app.
We used our branding to polish our low fidelity prototype and tested it out with potential users. Most critiques were about button inconsistencies and lack of some key CTAs.
The biggest issue however we encountered was this:
What would you do if you were an alumni?
We didn't have a feature in the app that would accommodate for students who had an email, but lost it after they graduated.
So, we redid our login screen and rearranged it to have an option to apply as a current non-student user like an alumni. Alumni may be a great resource for art supplies, especially those who used to be art students and decided not to go into the field.
