“Audiences are never something homogeneous…”
Overview
I was the last piece of the puzzle on this project for a great non-profit organization supporting and championing all arts. Being a painter myself, I won’t hide it - I wanted to work on this project and am very grateful I was selected to lead the UX design effort for it. The American Alliance of Artists and Audiences - 4A Arts is a robust web platform that showcases all arts across America. As a genre and event-agnostic web platform 4AArts.org features arts, artists and cultural listings such as performances, exhibitions, events, and arts education and cultural advocacies.
CLIENT
American Alliance of Artists and Audiences
4AArts.org
TEAM
Project Management: Chris Jordan
Visual Design: John Emerson
4A Arts Logo Design: Jamie Leo
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
PLATFORMS
Web, Mobile
To create a 0-1 usable web-based platform for listing and finding art and art-advocacy events across the US. How do we make a website for listing art events to be used by the largest possible pool of audiences?
Challenge
The project was impeccably organized from day one. I led the user experience design effort through the span of 12 two-week sprints, a research and discovery period, a user testing workshop, QA, and UAT period, during which the team utilized a highly iterative agile methodology.
Process
Discovery
Uncovering who we are building for specifically was of foremost importance. On the one hand, we have our Artists - anyone, from individual content makers to large arts organizations. On the other end is, of course, the Audience - everyone and anyone who would consume art. So: How would they all come together to meet in the middle?
4AArts had done a tremendous amount of audience research. Data and surveys from organizations such as The National Endowment for the Arts, Americans for the Arts, The Bureau of Economic Analysis, and the Wallace Foundation, among others, gave the team a plethora of material to get immersed in and extract the most impactful results for our development efforts. As the UX Designer, I inherited this wealth of information and started using it to learn and build.
Our user audience came down to two buckets of users, one on each side, further broken down into groups.
Partners:
- Large and Small Cultural Presenters
- Art Advocacies and Service Organizations
- Educational Institutions
- Creators
Visitors/Members:
- Specialists
- Enthusiasts
- Opportunists
- Stalwarts
Journey Map - Visitors/Members
User Persona: Stalwart
Journey Maps - Partners
User Persona: Educational Institution: Gibney Dance Center offers dance classes and wants to attract students.
Wireframing
The end of research and discovery led to kick-off of wireframing each page of the website. This is just a small selection of pages.
Wireframe for Submit Programming page.
Wireframe for User Dashboard page.
Testing
The user testing workshop ran midway through the process - it was a great way to check if we are on a path of understanding with actual members of both artistic institutions and lifelong art lovers. Reaching out to them with a usability testing workshop is always a foremost part of development - a favorite procedural moment for me as a designer, which is always very rewarding. We showcased our process and led interviews with a group of executives from leading art organizations (Carnegie Hall, NYFA, among others) and a core user group - the Stalwarts.
Mid-sprint testing workshop with some users from large cultural presenting organizations.
Visual design testing session with our visitors/members user group, 12 participants over the age of 75.
Development: Interaction Flows
Some more complex interactions needed a UX flow laid out, mostly for the engineering team.
More wireframes - Membership Purchase
Membership purchasing screens sequence.
Checkout Transaction
Becoming a 4AArts Member flow and Account deletion flow
Visual Design
Designer John Emerson created an extensive and all-inclusive 4AArts.org style guide and all visual design.
Outcomes
4AArts.org launched in March 2020, one year after the project first drew its development team. For a website promoting live events to come out at the start of a global pandemic was rather challenging. 4AArts.org stayed in the form showcased here throughout the pandemic for about two and a half years. At the end of 2022, the organization had changed leadership and created a more generic look to the website, keeping only the Search feature page in its original design.
Search results, dropdown menus.
Search results, checked custom filters.