BACKGROUND
Inkspiration is created for demotivated artists to re-learn the practice of doing art - not as a pursuit of perfection, but as something that is intrinsically fulfilling and fun. By introducing Inkspiration, we seek to revolutionise the creative learning experience but also redefine the essence of what being an ‘artist’ means.
Timeline
Feb - Jun 2024
Team
3 Students
Tools
Figma
Photoshop
Miro
Disciplines
Product Design
INITIAL PROBLEM STATEMENT
Amid the escalating demands and pressures of the digital age, creators face difficulties relearning the joy of their craft, as it becomes increasingly commodified.
DISCOVERY
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Assess whether digital platforms facilitate or impede artistic enjoyment
Explore barriers hindering artists from reconnecting with their craft by:
Investigating how external demands (i.e profit) affects the intrinsic enjoyment of art
Investiating how internal demands (i.e motivation) affects the intrisnc enjoyment of art
Identify attributes that contribute to fostering artistic creativity and playfulness
To investigate our objectives, we begun our research by:
Surveying 22 Design Students
Conducting Online Ethnography
Conducting 1 Focus Group
Upon synthesising the quantitative & qualitative data gathered into an affinity diagram, we uncovered four key insights:
1
Throughout evolving trends and advancements, creators must wield new technology as a pioneering tool to transcend redundancy and to affirm their enduring relevance
2
Creators must diversify monetisation avenues and target niche markets for the sustained success of their craft, fostering long-term viability and personal fulfilment
3
Creators must adopt imperfect improvisation as a foundational tool to build resilience, authenticity, and to catalyse growth beyond socially-projected standards of perfectionism
4
Creators need a community-driven platform that cultivates authentic connections and meaningful engagement, providing the spark needed to reignite passion in their creative pursuits
DEFINE
Our user research revealed a hard truth: That many creators are in the throes of a struggle; the digital age has pushed artists to greater levels of perfectionism - and our personas, and user journey map explore this in more depth
With this, we moved onto defining our new problem statement:
NEW PROBLEM STATEMENT
In an era saturated with escalating standards which promote perfectionism, creators often lose sight of the pure joy in their craft. This emphasises the pressing need for creators to embrace imperfect improvisation and transcend the constraints of the digital era, where artistic expression is too often reduced to quantifiable metrics
DEVELOP
STORYBOARDING
Through storyboarding we were able to visually narrate the user journey, as a flow of a story or process; and during this rapid session, we individually created 3 storyboards, for a combination of six storyboards during the session.
Idea 1: Elemental Adeventure Quest
Idea 2: Creative Pen
Idea 3: Household Roulette
Idea 4: Art Di-wreck-tion
Idea 5: Trickcasso
Idea 6: Hue-larious
We narrowed down our ideas to the best 3, and using Harris Profiles, we ultimately decided to prioritise the Creative Pen solution, as it ranked most highly on enabling the “Rediscovery of Artistic Joy”
DELIVER
Below is an iterative timeline of our process. At each stage, we conducted user testing to inform our design decisions and performed precedence analysis to justify any additional changes that were not derived from user feedback:
ITERATIVE TIMELINE
USABILITY TESTING FEEDBACK
A key component of our design process was usability testing. We recruited participants to complete tasks on the prototype, gathering qualitative data to inform design improvements.
With all the feedback considered at each stage, we aimed to focus on improvements that were feasible, and would best enhance the user experience.
STAGE 1: LOW-FIDELITY STORYBOARDS
User 1
User 2
User 3
User 4
User 5
❌“Think about the balance between autonomy and control”
❌“Opportunity for pre, post experience of using the device”
❌ “I think it would be really fun, is it more of a game or an exercise?”
❌ “I like the concept but what is the spatial element?”
❌“It’ll be flawed if it’s not compatible with other screens”
Moving forward, our next iteration focused on how we could improve the pre and post experience of using the device.
STAGE 2: 1ST MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
User 1
User 2
User 3
User 4
User 5
❌“Different modes could be offered”
❌“I ran out of things to do because I could only use two colours”
❌ “More time, colours and techniques”
❌“(I wanted) Time to adapt to the prompt”
❌“Stressful without guidance”
Moving forward, how could we offer different modes, implement clearer guidance, extend time allowance , and expand the variety of drawing constraints?
STAGE 3: 2ND MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
SUS SURVEYS
At this stage, we asked users to complete a SUS survey to gather insights on how well it was performing at the current iteration:
This SUS score indicates that we were moving in the right direction, but there still needed to be more work done as shown in our heuristics evaluation, along with the criticism received during the interviews that called for increased guidance at the beginning and more user control throughout the process.
HEURISTICS FEEDBACK
Heuristics Evaluations was conducted on the pen interface, and the feedback we received revealed more areas that needed improvement:
Visibility of System Status
❌ Pen screen visibility might be too small
User Control and Freedom
❌ No back buttons to return to previous interface
Error Prevention
❌ No confirmation after selecting options
So I redesigned the interface to incorporate these criticms into the final hi-fidelity prototype…
FINAL DESIGN
