Nia J.
NATIVE PLATFORM
Executive Summary
As a UX Researcher, I identified a core problem: Black creatives lacked a dedicated, mobile‑responsive platform that effectively showcases their digital artwork and non‑fiat offerings to the right audiences. Through a blend of discovery interviews and persona development with two archetypes (a freelance artist and a graphic designer balancing salaried and freelance work), I uncovered pain points around confusing navigation, visual misinterpretation of interactive elements, and limited access to relevant collaboration or exhibition opportunities. Evaluative research surfaced four top-priority improvements: clarify icon affordances, relocate and improve awareness of “add project” CTAs, enhance visibility and presentation of featured exhibit submissions, and streamline the collaborator search flow (filtering by country before discipline). Next steps would have included redesigning these key UI element on high-fidelity prototypes and running follow-up usability tests to validate that the new flows boost task comprehension, reduce time-on-task, and ultimately increase portfolio engagement and submission rates.
Role: UX Researcher
Research Methods:
Competitive analysis
IDI (In-depth Interviews)
Information Architecture Analysis: Closed Card Sorting
Usability testing
SUS (System Usability Score)
Project Overview
I focused on identifying the best way to improve the digital presence of Black creatives through the creation of a native platform specializing in the showcasing of digital artwork.
Scope of Work
This project sought to determine the best platform to amplify the work and voices of Black creatives who were interested in digital artwork, non-fiat currency, and online communities.
Problem Statement
How might we design a mobile-responsive website that empowers Black designers to showcase and sell their best work?
Market Research
Competitive Analysis
I wanted to understand the most popular online marketplaces for digital art, and determine how to improve support for Black creative through such platforms.
Methodology: SWOT Profile
I conducted market research for two days to have an accurate perspective of popular online marketplaces for digital art.
Overall Findings: Competitive Analysis
There were three top competitors when I analyzed digital marketplaces and digital marketplace that focused on art. However, I identified an opportunity to excel in a niche market that would showcase Black creatives, their digital art, and support the rarity of such collectibles through first edition certifications.
User Research
I set out to validate my hypothesis through user interviews to understand how participants felt about their current experience of making and selling art.
Methodology: User Interviews
For four days, I moderated user interviews over Zoom.
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Five people: All users were in North America. All users identified as being a Black creative.
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Interview script used for all interviews.
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I recorded all interviews with user permission to collect insights.
Findings
Black creatives wanted more visibility for their work, more education on NFT art, and more income earned from their art.
Overall Findings: User Research
Black creatives enjoyed what they do, however there was a desire to earn more based on their skills, and to have their work featured on a platform that didn't distract their customers with the work of other creatives.
Synthesis
In order to get a clear understanding of the ideal user's goals, needs, and pain points, I compiled all the data and personified it through the formation of two personas.
Methodology: Persona
The responses from user interviews led to the synthesis of data. During synthesis, I realized that there are two ideal users for this problem space, someone who was a full-time freelance artist and someone who created art and had a full-time, salaried job. Meet Shawn and Akia.
Finding
There are two types of ideal users. The full-time freelance artist needed to have multiple streams of income and was concerned about their audience supporting their work by giving it more exposure. Part-time freelance artists needed assistance with marketing and wanted to have their work visible on a platform with a large audience.
Overall Finding: Synthesis
There are two types of ideal users: the full-time freelance artist and the part-time freelance artist. Both of these ideal users were proficient in multiple disciplines of art, conducted research online to learn about NFTs and digital art marketplaces, wanted to have their work get more exposure, needed to easily track sales, and utilized Shopify and Instagram to promote their work. These similarities heavily influenced the design portion of this problem space.
The synthesis from preliminary user research led me to reexamine the problem statement and revise it based on the insight from data synthesis.
Revised Problem Statement
From my research, I learned that there are two types of distinct users. Their commonalities included being a multi-hyphenate in terms of art skills, engagement in strategic research to understand digital art marketplaces, maintaining inventory through e-commerce platforms, and utilization of social media as a form of digital marketing. From these findings:
How might we design a mobile-responsive website that empowers Black designers by increasing awareness of their work among their target audience?
After I revised the problem statement, I progressed to information architecture assessment.
Informational Architecture
Proposed Sitemap
Trends and insights from strategic research and desired business objectives allowed me to create a prosed sitemap for the platform that would address both types of user needs.
Trends and insight from card sorting allowed me to revise the sitemap in order to redesign the platform framework, so it was more aligned to user intuitiveness while also satisfying desired business objectives.
In addition to the creation of site maps, card sorting was also implemented to assess the desired informational architecture Black creatives would intuitively navigated through a digital platform.
Card Sorting
Methodology
Closed card sorting was used to determine how users think information is organized within a given framework. Users were prompted to sort cards for the primary navigation of the platform and secondary navigation of the design portfolio. All users completed two (2) card sorting exercises remotely through video conferencing software, and an online card sorting tool while I moderated the sessions. During card sorting sessions, participants also provided insight on filter options for another portion of the preliminary sitemap.
Findings
Primary Navigation
During the card sort exercise, participants seemed unsure of where to place Featured Designers, Featured Work, and Contact.
There was more consensus on the placement of Browse Design/Art in the Global Search category, Order Summary in the Connect Wallet/Cart category, and placing Overview in the About category.
The consensus was also more significant for the placement of Dashboard and Sign up/Login in the Designer Account category.
Participants gave a unanimous consensus to Profile and Setting in the Designer Category, Billing Details and Payment Methods in the Connect Wallet/Cart category, and Our Story/Values in the About category.
Popular Placement Matrix: This showed the percentage of participants who sorted each card into the corresponding category.
Design Portfolio
During the card sort exercise, participants seemed unsure of where to place Add Text/Narrative, Achievements and Rewards, and Add Media.
There was more consensus on the placement of Create/Edit Project, General Engagement, and Save/Publish Project to the Dashboard category, Availability for Commissions in the Profile category, and Design Discipline in the Design Portfolio category.
The consensus was also greater for Display Name in the Profile category.
Participants provided unanimous consensus to Funding/Revenue Status being placed in the Dashboard category, Current Location, Previous Experience, and Profile Picture being placed in the Profile Category,
and Add Project to Collection being placed in the Design Portfolio Category.
Popular Placement Matrix: This showed the percentage of participants who sorted each card into the corresponding category.
Insight from card sorting influenced the previously mentioned revised version of the site map. My recommendation for Primary Navigation was to allow Browse Design/Art to be a part of Store/Shop's
tertiary navigation and have a Global Search function. My recommendations for the Design Portfolio navigation included keeping the Design Portfolio, as secondary navigation while allowing Dashboard to become tertiary navigation to optimize the user experience. In addition to having Achievements and Rewards become quaternary navigation and found under Design Portfolio.
Lastly, I determined that for each card sorting exercise, three (3) cards didn’t have just one definitive category. During wireframing, the categories needed to be keywords that did not cause doubt
for users as they navigated the platform.
Overall, Black creatives needed a social platform with features that will allow them to stand out from other designers and serve as “a tangible solution for Black creatives that can benefit them in the long run” by decreasing the skepticism of cryptocurrency via education.
Product Design
Actionable Insights
The insight gained from user research led to actionable insights that influenced the identification of key features.
Proficiency in multiple disciplines of art>> Ability to add projects to a design portfolio
Support more exposure of work>> Distinct feature to submit a project to an exhibit
Desire to collaborate with other creatives>> Ability to remotely work with other creatives
Maintain an art collection that's focused on a specific theme>>Distint feature to purchase art relevant to cultural experiences
Methodology: Hi-Fi Wireframe
A UX designer created high fidelity wireframes to ideate potential design solutions for the problem space while keeping the competitive analysis and user research in mind. This fidelity consisted of digital wireframes created through Adobe XD.
Findings
Actionable insights from market and user research led to the identification of MVP features for the platform:
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Global Search feature
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Simplistic Design
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Geographic diversity of creatives
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Image File Extension compatibility
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Digital Wallet
Insight: Redesign the wireframes, including the icons to ensure that they were the same color.
The high fidelity prototype is intentionally not shown to adhere to intellectual property protection requests.
Once the high-fidelity wireframes were created, I progressed to the product testing phase of this problem space.
Usability Testing
Insights gained from user research and design sessions allowed me to assess the intuitiveness of the native platform.
Methodology: Moderated, Remote, Explorative Usability Testing
I created four tasks to test based on insight from strategic research to assess the native platform's navigability and intuitiveness.
Task 1: Let’s say, as a designer with an existing profile on the platform, you just finished some new illustrations and want to add this as a project in your design portfolio. Show me how you would do that on this platform.
Task 2: Now let’s say you want to submit the project you just created to the featured exhibit “Black in Space” on the website. Show me how you would do that from here.
Task 3: Now let’s say you want to collaborate with a South African Illustrator for an upcoming project. Show me where you would do that on this platform.
Task 4: Finally, let’s say you want to add to your art collection by purchasing social justice art created as a motion design graphic. Show me how you would acquire this piece of art.
Findings
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Task 1 was the only task that experienced all three forms of success (direct, indirect, and failure) from users.
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Tasks 2 and 3 had the same number of users who completed the task through indirect success, but Task 2 had a higher average success rate.
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Task 3 had the most failures and the lowest average success rate.
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Task 4 experienced the most direct success and the highest average success rate.
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Lastly, Task 4 received an average rating of being the easiest task among users, while users gave Task 3 an average rating of being one of the more difficult tasks to achieve.
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"Community" and "Exposure" were the most repeated words to describe why the prototype was useful, community in terms of supporting the black design community and exposure in terms of marketing and brand presence.
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"Modern," "Clean," and "Easy/straight forward" were the words most often used to describe the overall experience and design of the platform.
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Users were primarily motivated to interact with the platform to participate in collaborations and get inspired.
Insight: Improving navigation was necessary to increase the direct success of tasks. Users described the prototype as an intuitive platform that addressed their needs, goals, and desires.
Methodology: SUS Statements
After users attempted to accomplish four tasks through functions and features of the prototype, they were prompted to evaluate their overall experience through 10 statements to measure the usability of the prototype (system usability scale).
Findings
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Most users were neutral on statement 1, disagreed with statements 2, 8 and 10, completely disagreed with statements 4 and 6, and agreed with statements 3, 5, 7, and 9. This mixed-method portion of data also contributed to the redesign recommendations of the prototype.
Statement 1: I think that I would like to use this app frequently.
Statement 2: I found the app unnecessarily complex.
Statement 3: I thought the app was easy to use.
Statement 4: I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this app.
Statement 5: I found the various functions in this app were well integrated.
Statement 6: I thought there was too much inconsistency on this app.
Statement 7: I would imagine that most people would learn to use this app very quickly.
Statement 8: I found the app very cumbersome to use.
Statement 9: I felt very confident using this app.
Statement 10: I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this app.
Final Recommendations
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Improve the design of icons under "Invest in the future of design" (on the landing page), so users weren't misled into thinking they were buttons. Also, redesign the icons so they had a consistent color.
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Improve navigation of adding a project to the design portfolio, consider placing the call to action/prompt above the fold on the Profile wireframe.
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Improve navigation to submit a project to a featured exhibit OR improve font size for the call to action prompt (of submitting to a featured exhibit).
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Improve navigation to collaborate with other designers, allow users to select the country first then select the design discipline of interest.
There were also secondary recommendations to consider when planning the redesign of the prototype.
-Consider increasing the font size for primary navigation.
-Consider removing About Us from Our Community (improve the navigation).
-Consider sharing the screening process for designers to ensure the platform was a welcoming space for Black creatives.
Overall Findings
While most users enjoyed the overall prototype experience, key redesigns were needed to enhance its intuitiveness. Improvements to critical tasks may have enhanced the sentiments felt in terms of SUS statements, particularly the majority of users who felt neutral in terms of thinking that they would frequently use this app.