Summary

Online viewing rooms are an up-and-coming tool within the art world that cropped up at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a sudden need for galleries and art institutions to display art online, existing companies adjacent to the art world– databases, CRMs (Customer Relationship Management systems), and art e-commerce sites– began to quickly deploy online viewing room platforms to meet rising demand. As the individual recently tasked with building a gallery’s viewing rooms, I developed Gallerist to address a void in the market today: a clean, easy-to-use platform for administrative users.

Gallerist is an art viewing room platform that focuses on ease and simplicity for the administrative user.

Problem

Existing viewing room platforms place more value on cutting edge front-end features, such as VR gallery spaces. However, by focusing exclusively on what the client of the gallery is viewing, the administrative user building the viewing room gets lost in the mix. Since their user flow is unacknowledged, the process of building a viewing room is difficult as a result.

Solution

Based on interviews with administrative users and personal product knowledge, my solution is to build a desktop web app that allows users to build viewing rooms in real time with drag-and-drop features. Through competitive analysis, I learned that most viewing rooms are not stand-alone services, and the administrative end often is adopted from other services the company offers. Gallerist allows not just a great platform to view art but is custom made for the needs of the user building a viewing room.

Deliverables

Competitive Analysis

What I learned in my competitive analysis was that most offerings do not provide a view into the administrative end of their product unless you are a paying customer. Most insights that I got into these portals came from user surveys or personal product knowledge.

The main competitor to Gallerist I found through my research was Artlogic, which is a database and CRM that offers stand-alone services for viewing rooms as well as websites. Their viewing room offering currently dominates the marketplace. Their marketing focuses on online viewing rooms as another means of generating sales for galleries. For example, their data capture tool allows galleries to grow their client base through online leads. On the front-end, viewing rooms can be created with existing themes, and other features, such as “View on Wall,” allows buyers to see the artworks on a wall space.

Another competitor to Gallerist, albeit indirectly, is Artland, VR/3D technology for viewing rooms connected to market platform. Their viewing room galleries are advertised as “Beautifully Simple Online-Only Exhibitions,” not necessarily as sales tools. Moreover, they emphasize the ease of their program:  “Use only JPGs, and little of your time.” Overall, Artland is an extension of a gallery’s programming, not necessarily gallery sales.

Courtesy of Artland

User Surveys and Interviews

My user research consisted of user surveys and interviews with administrative users of online viewing room platforms. Because of the niche market, I specifically focused on those who work in the art world. 100% of respondents work in NYC galleries, be it as directors or other workers, such as registrars or gallery assistants. Through competitive analysis, I learned that galleries and art fairs are targets for viewing rooms. The respondents of my survey thus reflected the target demographic of existing products.

I followed up with two respondents for user interviews, both of whom used Artlogic, and asked what their pain points were in their viewing room experience. I illustrate the roadblocks they describe using screenshots from the Artlogic platform I use.

“There are two different portals for editing a viewing room. It’s so confusing!”

— Gallery Associate

“As a designer, more customizable text options. VRs prioritize accommodation across screen sizes over style. It’s novice-proof, but there’s a happy medium.”

— Gallery Registrar

User Persona

The user persona I created as a result of my research is Melanie Roberts, a 29 year old gallery assistant here in NYC. Melanie grew up wanting to make art and excelled in her art classes and discovered a love of art history in college, becoming a studio and art history double major. After she finished her undergraduate degree, she enrolled in Sotheby’s contemporary art MA program in New York and subsequently became a gallery assistant in a Chelsea gallery. 

Map and Story Board

In order to better empathize with Melanie— although I have been in her shoes many times before!— I utilized a storyboard and a journey map to connect with her feelings in the process of creating a viewing room. What I gleaned from this process was the feeling of satisfaction in finishing the viewing room and how a seamless process throughout contributed to that sentiment.

User Flow

The user flow thus followed the administrative user of Gallerist in building the viewing room. Because there are multiple decision points in a highly interactive platform, I focused specifically on two flows: making the viewing room and editing the viewing room.

Shown above is a simple sketch I made when thinking about the editing page of Gallerist, and I kept the design pretty consistent since this point. On the left third are dropdown panels of features that a user can drag-and-drop into the right preview, taking up two-thirds of the screen. There are respective Save and Publish buttons at the bottom of this features column, and an eyeball at the top right can take the user to a live preview. The grey box sketched in the foreground represents the modals that would pop up when a user would add features to their viewing room. It’s through these modals that they could upload image files, input artwork information, and more.

Branding

In thinking about Gallerist’s branding, I came up with a few adjectives that served as tenets in my branding philosophy: clean, classic, straightforward, minimal. For me, my goal was to not have the branding detract from the art contained in the user’s viewing rooms. I thought of gallery spaces and museums, and how their use of materials placed priority on the art at hand. Concrete grey floors, subtle wood, white or grey walls— nothing about the architecture overpowered the art contained in these spaces.

I found the font Stanley to be the perfect serif to convey these ideals for the Gallerist logo. I also wanted a unique “g” to be an app logo, and Stanley fit the bill.

Mockups

My mockups were built upon the foundation laid by the wireframes. On the homepage, I elaborated upon the design by introducing a navy blue banner behind the viewing rooms. On the editing platform, I created a distinction between the editing platform— navy and beige— with the blue-black and white viewing room preview.

I also realized how many more actions I had to account for beyond what I had sketched out in my wireframes. For example, how would the modal look for uploading images for a grid or carousel? How about saving the viewing room or a notice ensuring that the user wanted to publish their OVR? 

In addition to these features, I wanted to add further customization to the viewing room, such as changing the style of font or the size within a certain range within body texts and headers.

Summary of Usability Tests

I completed four usability tests with a low-fidelity prototype on two groups of users: those who had built viewing rooms in the past and those who did not work in the art world. I tested creation of a viewing room and editing of a viewing room in my prototype. These test subjects fell into the demographic determined through my user research. They were:

• Gallery Associate, 30 years old, female

• Gallery Director, 28 years old, female

• Software Engineer, 40 years old, male

• Project Manager, 30 years old, male

Key Findings from Tests

1. There were positive results with visual design. Users said that it was “clean,” “neat and easy to understand,” and that they “like the color scheme.”
   

2. Three out of four users tested used the same word to describe the product: intuitive. No one encountered major difficulties in building viewing room. However, there was some initial confusion with the icons, but as the test continued, the users better understood the affordances.
   

3. Some users thought the dotted outline for features boxes, especially text boxes, indicated that the feature could not only be edited but also moved. The Gallery Associate suggested adding that to the homepage when hovering over the viewing rooms
   

Additional A/B Testing

I also conducted a later A/B test with the same set of users when refining my prototype based on their responses. I tested two different considerations to my design:

• Collapsible column of features at left with full-page preview behind

• Moving “save” and “publish” buttons out of left column onto the preview screen

The above mockups illustrate the idea of a collapsible features column rather than a fixed one on the editing platform. There was an overall neutral response to this panel— no one had a preference one way or another. However, the Project Manager brought up a great point, saying “I think that this aspect would be good for smaller computers so that the space is better optimized.”

I also had the idea of moving the “Publish” and “Save” buttons from the left to the right in line with the Preview eyeball button. These calls to action would be illustrated with an associated icon. Again, there were varied responses that were not quite negative. but not much in favor either.

“Button change would be a minimal intervention, and I’m not sure if one is better than the other,” said the Gallery Associate. “Since I’m not interacting with it that often, it would not make a huge difference.” On the other hand, the Software Engineer appreciated how the shift cleaned up the design: “I like the button on the right side since it makes the left column less cluttered.”

Ultimately, given the variation of responses, I decided not to move forward with either design in this iteration. Instead, once the MVP is deployed, I want to see how users interact with Gallerist and understand if these interventions would be helpful with frequent use.

 I also had ideas for further customization of Gallerist viewing rooms, as it was important to survey respondents (i.e. current users of viewing rooms). One such idea was to coordinate the color palette to the art in the viewing room, perhaps by right clicking each image to select a default set of colors with a coordinating accessible font color.

What I Learned