Case study: Design process
Challenge: exploring how an art organisation can introduce engagement strategies into their online offering, while staying true to their USP with their online offerings.
This work was conducted as my Thesis while studying MSc UX Engineering at Goldsmiths.I was working in conjunction with Artangel, an non-profit art organisation that produces site specific art exhibitions that are open to the public for free.The challenge was to engage and retain audiences, while exploring potential income streams and converting digital users into long term patrons of the arts.
It's not so much about attaching a price to something, but engaging with audiences through them, retaining audiences over time and appealing to a more democratised version of giving in the arts.
I began by creating the current user journey, showing where people are losing them along the way. Currently the only way for the public to support Artangel is via their patronage scheme aimed at high wealth individuals.
It's not so much about attaching a price to something, but engaging with audiences through them, retaining audiences over time and appealing to a more democratised version of giving in the arts.
I began by creating the current user journey, showing where people are losing them along the way. Currently the only way for the public to support Artangel is via their patronage scheme aimed at high wealth individuals.
For many that means once they leave the exhibition, their only way to maintain a relationship is via social media. I wanted to find a more tangible way to keep the general audience engaged, creating a larger base for potential patrons later on.
Research process
I created a survey to send out to their mailing list subscribers. This primarily aimed to get quantitative data on giving in the arts, but also to pre-screener for interview participants.
My concern about having a back up plan in case no one responded turned out to be unfounded as we quickly received 475 responses, meaning it was possible to drill down into the data and select interview participants from across demographic groups and explore why some of their differences in answers came about. All respondent groups said that they've increased the amounts they give over the previous 18 months, with younger groups a large proportion said they increased their giving, albeit by a lower amount than other groups.
Caring for the organisation's future was the most common reason for giving and giving back is quite important to people too. Interestingly these existing audience members suggested they were not particularly motivated by exclusive content or discounts. However, when I got to the interviews it turned out that wasn't necessarily the case.
When questioned on their attitudes to giving, when it becomes transactional, they don't see that as a donation. People viewed memberships or annual passes as something that they're getting from rather than them giving in and of itself.
I used the combination of quantitative and qualitative research gained on their existing audience to build out mindset profiles for the groups. Similar to personas, these are looking more at the motivations different groups have to interact with the organisation than creating one archetype to represent them.
My concern about having a back up plan in case no one responded turned out to be unfounded as we quickly received 475 responses, meaning it was possible to drill down into the data and select interview participants from across demographic groups and explore why some of their differences in answers came about. All respondent groups said that they've increased the amounts they give over the previous 18 months, with younger groups a large proportion said they increased their giving, albeit by a lower amount than other groups.
Caring for the organisation's future was the most common reason for giving and giving back is quite important to people too. Interestingly these existing audience members suggested they were not particularly motivated by exclusive content or discounts. However, when I got to the interviews it turned out that wasn't necessarily the case.
When questioned on their attitudes to giving, when it becomes transactional, they don't see that as a donation. People viewed memberships or annual passes as something that they're getting from rather than them giving in and of itself.
I used the combination of quantitative and qualitative research gained on their existing audience to build out mindset profiles for the groups. Similar to personas, these are looking more at the motivations different groups have to interact with the organisation than creating one archetype to represent them.
These were used along woth the answers from the interviews to find pain points they experience differently, particularly the Younger Culture Explorers group. This helped generate some quick fixes that could be implemented within the user journey and other ideas that would help build engagement over time.
Guerilla testing
Having come up with these ideas, I needed to speak to the everyday audiences, because due to the site-specific nature of the work, often each exhibition will have a local audience who is not a committed follower. I leapt on the opportunity to do some real in person guerilla testing with the audience at an exhibition in Hackney. I took two exercises and asked them to sort cards into the order they might perform a task and get some opinions on the different keep in touch methods
These exercises helped me re-organise my initial user journey and put in some additional touchpoints.
Wireframing interventions
I proposed some new wireframes for the patron page, where based on the feedback from the interviews, people weren't really aware of the benefits to them to be a patron, but also how artists might benefit from being a patron. The interviews also indicated that people want transparency on how money is being spent. Responding to this, I came up with a couple of sort of layouts that start bringing in some of those ideas into this ranging from testimonials from artists or facts about how donations are spent so they could make an informed decision about it.
I looked for opportunities within existing content pages because they have a lot of rich video and audio content on their website and wanted to look at ways of associating donations with the content, but without restricting people from giving from viewing the content.
I looked for opportunities within existing content pages because they have a lot of rich video and audio content on their website and wanted to look at ways of associating donations with the content, but without restricting people from giving from viewing the content.
High-fidelity prototyping
The most advanced solution was a high fidelity prototype based of a product designed to be accessed at the exhibition offering a digital pathway to keep in touch, demoing functions like information about the exhibition as well as access to exclusive digital content, repurposing archive material with time-based incentives and rotating content that can be accessed at a later date.
Rather than leaping straight into development, my proposal was to experiment and iterate functionality using off the shelf solutions like linktree to see what content appealed to users and tailoring the initial product and offering, to validate the concept before build.
Rather than leaping straight into development, my proposal was to experiment and iterate functionality using off the shelf solutions like linktree to see what content appealed to users and tailoring the initial product and offering, to validate the concept before build.
