User Interviews
For our user research, we interviewed a mix of artists, curators and small gallery owners. We wanted to gain a general understanding of our intended user base. This helped us get a stronger insight of the user group we chose to focus on, and it helped us continue to get a general idea of the user’s needs. These interviews helped ground our future work by directing our interests to specific user pain points and interests. The insights were used in making our user personas.

RESEARCH
takeaways:
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All of these users are extremely passionate about the arts and what they can offer people.
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The users struggle with financial backing.
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The users have a strong focus on community and want their art to send a message
Polished Personas
Based on our user research, we created personas that are representative of our intended users. These personas are user archetypes whose characteristics stem from the previous research we did. Molly and Sean helped us keep in mind central aspects, such as goals and pain points, of our intended users. These personas were used in identifying key emotional journeys depicted in our journey map below.

takeaways:
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At this point, we wanted to focus on a more specific user group. We decided to go more towards the curatorial side of the users while still maintaining feedback we got from the artist interviews.
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We also needed to narrow down our focus on a few specific paint points. After this stage, we decided to pursue increasing interactions between artist and galleries, building a community, and getting assistance finding art that fits a theme.

User Journey Map
Based on our persona, Sean, we made a user journey map that tracked his process in creating an event and the emotional implications it has. The journey map helped us pinpoint key times of stress and excitement related to this job. The map is another layer that helps us ground our final project to the users we want to help. This, with the two personas, helped us identify important emotions, moments, and goals that directed our design requirements and final product.


takeaways:
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Sean felt most excited when he accomplished something, like finding a theme, picking an artist, or opening a gallery. Completing steps of the process is the most rewarding.
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Sean felt most stressed at the start of each step in the process as he often felt overwhelmed at what he had left to complete.