Design art investing for millennial investor

Project overview
My team partnered with Goldman Sachs to tackle a specific problem and created a design solution based on thorough research and analysis.
my contribution
  • Led user research, conducting 5 user interviews, synthesizing results, turn them into actionable insights.
  • Created an interactive high-fidelity prototype to validate and iterate on the design.
  • Developed a brand system, built color palette and logotype, ensure consistency throughout the design.
Time
12 weeks
Adivisor
Roger Mader
Criswell Lappin
Olivia Greco
Ravi Seethapathy
Role
User Research
Product Design
Prototyping
Team
Danny Weng
Jane Guan
Nayeon Kim
Sukky Yan

Problem

How might we make art investment more accessible for millennial investors?
The art industry is valued at over a trillion dollars yet access to it is limited to a small percent of the population, What are some ways to make it more accessible for millennial investor?

Research

Me and my team interviewed 7 millennial investors to learn their needs. We also talked to people in the art industry, including artist, art dealer, art collector, gallery owner and NFT investor to learn the context.
Zoom interview
Empathy map of users

Key findings

Findings from the user side.
  • Millennials investors prefer physical art
    “Art and real estate are something you wanna live in or have in your space. It’s an emotional investment.” - Catherine, 34
  • Millennials start investing from small amount of money.
    “I always start investing from small amounts of money.” - Joe, 29
Findings from the business side.
  • Art trading has become digital.
    Digitalization of art trading is happening. Auction houses turned online after pandemic.
  • New artists are in need of exposure.
    With an obstacle to opening up a career, new artists are always looking for new place to show their work.

User Persona

Within the broad user group-millennials, making an persona could help us focus on designing for specific group of user.
Kelsey -  Millennial Investor
Based on the user journey map, we identified two key stages to address pain points for millennial investors:
‍
1. Acquiring art information
2. Making the purchase

User Journey Map

Current User Journey Map
A Preferred User Journey Map

Design

An ecosystem linking millennials and emerging artists for art investment.
To create an ecosystem where millennial investors can discover affordable artworks from emerging artists, enabling them to begin investing with smaller sums of money.
Invest lower price artworks from new artists
Users could browse various artworks and new promising artists they're interested in.
Trade artworks and make a return
Users could not only purchase but sell the artworks on this platform easily and simultaneously.
Track the value of your collection
The page allows user to check investment status and market signals for the artworks.
view Prototype

User testing

To quickly learn user's thoughts for idea. We use low-fi prototype and test the ideas with our users. Their valuable feedback was incorporated into our design iterations, driving improvement in the next iteration.
Testing with users
Users only wants to see artworks they like, and prefer directly choosing from different artworks instead of concepts.
"Art is a combination of all of the elements instead of single concept." - Soojin, 32
Allow users to choose artwork they like more intuitively
Users are happy about this score related stuff and pretty eager to see more details, any numbers related, any value related things. We took that opinion to our next iteration.
"This is really helpful. I'm interested in anything number related here!" - Antoni, 34
Making numbers-related design more accessible
Insights

Results & feedback

Positive feedback from both user and client!‍
  • 5 out of 5 user would love to use our product.
    "I would love to use it if your product launched." - Millennial investor
  • Great feedback from client!
    “Impressed by your final outcome! It was engaging, polished and clear. “
    - Sponsor from Goldman Sachs

Reflection

It was a great learning experience working with my classmates and Goldman Sachs team. Being able to work with an industry partner and hearing their feedback definitely made the entire thing much more realistic. It has widen my perspective of design and industry. I also learned a few new things:
  • Designing from an innovative business angle
    When I initially started, I have very limited knowledges about art investment and business. I learned to design from different perspective and how it could be growing in the near future.
  • Diverse research from different groups
    While we were conducting our design research and testing throughout the project, we always tried to get a varied sample of group. This helped in making decisions for our design decision and focus on the group. Preventing bias for our design solution.

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© Danny Weng 2022