Own Art
Fusing art & affordability
In their own words: Own Art is a national initiative that makes buying contemporary art and craft affordable by providing interest-free loans for the purchase of original work.
Since 2004, the scheme has enabled more than 50,000 customers to get access to the art they love. Delivered through a network of over 300 galleries across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Own Art has so far supported £56 million of sales of contemporary art and craft to UK customers.
Client
Own Art
Project length
6 months
Platform
Desktop & Mobile
Agency | Wolfcub Digital
My Role: Design Sprint Facilitation,
UX/ UI Design & Research
The Purpose
Having recently completed a rebranding process, Own Art needed help with redefining their online experience, integrating their updated brand approach and helping them to develop a new and robust online platform for their members.
The Challenges
With online member engagement in decline, it was essential that the new, reimagined Own Art platform was once again the centre of the membership experience.
Aside from the membership platform, the new Own Art website also needed to successfully bridge the gap between new and established art buyers, galleries and artists, as well as position them as the best place to buy affordable modern art and gain access to funding.
Discovery
We adopted a highly collaborative approach with the Own Art team, working with them intensively throughout the project. They were big fans of design thinking, so it was great to see them react positively to new tools and methodologies we presented them with.
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The project kicked off with a strategy workshop to gain a better understanding of their business objectives, target audience, competition as well as digging deeper into what features they wanted to explore or change. We then moved onto desk research.
We took a deep quantitative dive with a UX and content audit which included data analysis, heuristic evaluation and comparative analysis. We also worked with the team to help craft surveys and review any they had already done to date.
Moving into the primary research, we looked at the qualitative side of things and interviewed existing and new gallery members, alongside those new to buying art to help us shape their online experience.
Define
Armed with fresh, new insights and research alongside a clear understanding of the key challenges, the team were then guided through an intensive Design Sprints week to identify key user journeys and produce solutions. The week then culminated in a prototype that we could validate and test with their target audience.
Develop
With the feedback and results back from testing the prototype, we were then ready to move onto the next stages. Agility was at the heart of this project, so we continued to come together for regular agile sprints that helped us to refine user journeys, agree on the information architecture and re-test until we were all happy with the output.
The next challenge was to create a design approach that allowed us to realise a consistent interface that, when coupled with a minimalist design style, would let the wide range of artwork on the platform shine without interference.
Deliver
As a long-standing and well-established organisation, with two very different and distinct target audiences, Own Art had many factors to consider in the redesign of their website and new membership platform. But working closely with the team, and offering an open and collaborative environment for all key stakeholders, ensured that nothing was missed, from first interaction to final delivery.
Both the site and member platform were well received by users, members and even the press. Overall, interaction and engagement on the site increased by 300% in addition to a flurry of new enquiries.
