Overview
My Role
UX Designer, Consultant
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Team
Francis Afriyie UX Designer, Consultant
Karina Silva UX Designer, Consultant
Samir Gacevic UX Designer, Consultant
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Process
User Research / User Interviews / Comparative Research / Persona / User Journey / Information Architecture / Mid-Fi Wireframing / Hi-Fi Mockup / Prototyping / Usability Testing
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Tools
Sketch / Invision / Zeplin / Keynote
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About
Alphaa.io's mission is to ensure the authenticity and transactional integrity of artworks throughout their entire chain of custody. In the visual arts collectibles sector, verifying authenticity and certification has historically been challenging.
To address this, Alphaa.io presents a streamlined certification solution that not only assures the ownership of editions but also guarantees comprehensive transactional histories, facilitating effortless trading of artworks.
Easy Trading
A QR code on the back of the edition links back to the platform and the owner can login with his unique credentials to transfer ownership of that work.
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Unique Identifier
The purchaser of a work automatically receives a unique identifier, giving him access to that work’s token.
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Trust System
This mechanism creates a trust system in which the work and token must have the same owner in order to have any trading value.
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Problem Statement
Art collectors face substantial challenges due to a lack of standardized authentication and tracking systems. The existing dependency on third parties complicates and increases the cost of verifying artworks' authenticity and provenance. This leads to difficulties in managing and safeguarding art collections effectively. A streamlined, user-friendly solution is essential to simplify the authentication process, organize tracking mechanisms, and empower collectors to make informed decisions confidently and efficiently.
User Interviews
The team interviewed 10 people involved with the buying and selling of artworks, including personal art collectors, interior designers, curators, gallery owners/ associates. Interviews lasted from 20-30 min. Our goals for these interviews were to,
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Understand buyer’s mental models with how they track their collections
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How the user currently verifies authenticity
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Understand online vs offline methods
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Gauge appetite for digital provenance
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Understand familiarity on terms associated with smart contracts
Affinity Mapping and Key Insights
After conducting our interviews, we synthesized the data with a method called “Affinity Mapping”. This process involves labeling key insights from each interviewee onto a Post It Note, and then grouping key findings together.
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From the Affinity Map, we were able to identify key “I Statements” and then client-facing “Research Insights” to further narrow down our research topic. Below were some of our key take aways:
Less experienced buyers tend to focus on aesthetics more than the value of their collection until they decide to sell it.
“Most of the time it’s just trying to make an office look pretty for the smallest budget possible.”
Buyers see the importance of keeping track of info on the works in their collections, though they lack simple reliable methods of keeping inventory.
“I just use something as simple as Excel to keep record of my collection.”
Buyers views on provenance and authenticity depend on the type of art as well as their reason for purchase.
“Authenticity means different things to different collectors.”
Persona
I don't want to go through the whole process of finding out how much the works of art I own will be worth in the future.
Goals
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To keep track of useful information related to her art collection
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To invest in her art collection with ease
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To support the emerging artist scene
Frustrations
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Relying on third parties for information about her collection
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Currently uses manual methods to keep track of the info on the works in her collection
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Struggles to ascertain how much a given piece is worth or how much it has changed in value
Barbara the Collector
Age: 30
Occupation: Teacher
Location: New York City
Needs
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A secure and easy way to certify ownership over her limited edition works.
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To be able to easily verify that artworks are her own
Behaviors
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Keep track of inventory manually (using Excel and other software)
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Buys art online and in-person
Hi-Fidelity Screens
List View
List view can easily be accessible from tile view and presents the user with summary information about their artwork.
Tile View
Tile view is presented to the user if they want to expand their collection view. It allows the user to display their collection in a nice, clean interface.
Collection View
Collection view allows the users to sort their collections into any categories they choose, whether its by color, artist, region, or style.
Details
Once a user clicks on an artwork, they are presented with information on their collection and artist.
Record Info
The record info tab is the unique idenitifier of the art piece, that helps secure its authenticity and makes it difficult for it to be duplicated.
History
The hist tab allows the users to see the provenance of the piece of art, including who has own it before and what the price each person had paid for it.
Trade
The trade tab allows the user to easily trade the piece of art to another collector when the time comes.
Potential Results
With the emergence of blockchain technology being used to track valuables' prominence and authenticity, we expect to see an increase of at least 20% sales on their platform in the coming years with alphaa.io, seeing the trend of other competitors who have adopted the same technology.
Currently, Alphaa.io has only been tracking the prominence of artwork sold on their parent site, alphaa.com, but is planning to expand to track other art pieces not sold by them as the technology matures. We expect that alphaa.io could surpass alphaa.com as the primary revenue stream in the next few years.