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Collekt. Product Design
Collekt. New B2B CMS Product Research & Design
My client grew up in his parents' gallery (literally), and his father grew up in his parents' gallery (also literally). As his grandparents and parents have gotten older, and he's seen their collections grow over time, he got to thinking: How do they manage it all?
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Enter: Collekt.
What's in Store
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About the Project
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User Research
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Market Research
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Designs
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Next Steps
About the Project
Problem Space
Art collectors and gallery curators manage large, often scattered collections, making inventory tracking challenging. Keeping their collections organized and accessible remains a persistent struggle.
Our Users
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Primary Users: Art Collectors and Gallery Owners
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Secondary Users: Artists and Art Enthusiasts
Team & Tools
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Team: UX Project Lead, Product Designer (me)
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Tools: Figma, Zeplin, Google Suite, Airtable, Zoom
My Responsibilities
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Joined the team as founding UX researcher
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Developed and led the user research plan and conducted in-depth interviews
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Prioritized features and design decisions based on competitor research, user needs, business goals, and development efforts
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Delivered high-fidelity designs and interactive prototype to client
User Research
After receiving the data on who our users are, we decided to focus on our primary users for this first round of designs. Our 6 interview participants fit into either of these 2 categories:
Gallery Owner
Individuals who own galleries
Large Collection Owner
Individuals who own large art collections (20+ pieces)
Interview Findings
1
Collection Management
Users manage their collections:
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Through paperwork, photographs, and sometimes on Artsy.
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By hiring professionals to organize their databases.
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By organizing and tracking information on the piece from artist info, to medium, to current location if its loaned elsewhere.
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Communications with Followers
Relationships with followers impact business success, users depend on their visits and donations to fund collections and galleries.
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They keep audiences updated via email and social media posts.
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They find it difficult to keep up interactions along with organizing and tracking collection whereabouts.
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"I wish I could sell my pieces and organize them all in one place." — User
3
Legacy & Budget
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Users have a hard time balancing their budget for their growing collections.
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Users want to manage their legacy plans for their pieces in same place they track them.
Competitive Analysis
After picking our final features, we dove into competitive analysis to see how our competitors are doing these features (and if there's any way we can stand out).​
Competitors: Digital Art Collection CMSs
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Artsy
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Artwork Archive
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Artlogic
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Artnet
Common Themes: Where They Stand Out
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Each competitor offers similar features, but some offer more features than others.
Common Themes: Where We Stand Out
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Each competitor offers similar features, but some offer more than others. None of the competitors have all the filtering and tracking features that our users need.
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None of the competitors have a social or audience engagement aspect to them.
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None of the competitors have Legacy Plan or Budget Tracking features.
What Will We Prioritize?
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Feature-inclusive collection management
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Social & audience engagement
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Later due to scope: Legacy Plan & Budget Tracking, because we need to research these more in the legal space and find comparators that have this since our competitors don't have them.
Feature Prioritization
Brainstorming Features
After our interviews, we brainstormed every feature idea that came to mind in Airtable. These came from:
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Insights from Interviews
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Competitive Analysis
Scoring
With a long list of user needs, we prioritized each one on three quantitative scales based on UX and business priorities and development efforts.
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Scoring: Business and UX Priorities
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1: Lowest Priority
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2: Mid-Level Priority
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3: Highest Priority
​Scoring: Development Efforts
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1: Low Effort
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2: Medium Effort
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3: High Effort
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The higher a feature scored on Business and UX Priorities, the more we prioritized it as it was a major user need and/or business goal.
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The higher the score for Development Effort, the less we would prioritize it for this round of designs due to timeline and sticking to the MVP.
Prioritized Features
​​This led us to stick to specific features for the collection management and audience engagement sides of the MVP before scope creep could become an issue.
These features included:
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Filtering artworks by Artist, medium, title
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Tracking sales and location of pieces
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Having in-app network of artists, collectors, and gallery owners
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Access to public relations metrics, email, and social media
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Inviting staff to manage collection and PR
Dashboard
The key elements we included are:
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Access all needs from 1 place or system
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Collection Tracker
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Visual aids
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Communicate with audiences
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Access to legacy plan
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Budget tracking
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Explore new art, artists, and galleries
Collection Tracker CMS & New Piece Upload
The key features we included in the CMS itself are:
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Access all needs from one place or system
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Collection Tracker
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Upload images and new pieces
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Control list order and filter
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Track costs and prices
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Track past and present locations
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No side scrolling
Import New Piece
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The key features we included for the Import feature are:
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Uploading an image of the piece
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Including descriptions of pieces
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Listing relevant piece information (artist, medium, and location) that owners need to track
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Sale price
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Contact information of previous piece owner
Next Steps
The next scope will include designing the flow and functions of:
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Legacy Management
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Budget Management
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Piece Information View Accesses from CMS and Dashboard
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Testing designs with primary users