App for connecting tattoo artists and clients by style and location preferences. Here are some examples to show the ux process that was done. For final screens scroll down :)
User Interviews
After a series of interviews with potential users I learned clients usually go to artists recommended by friends or even, if they are feeling spontaneous, to the first tattoo parlor they find. Often, they regret their first tattoos for being unoriginal and unprofessional. In the meantime, beginning artists have original ideas they try to find clients for and often end up tracing whatever clients bring them to pay the bills. They work hard to become professional and have to compete with hacks.
It was clear the best way to serve my users would be to connect artists to clients who will love their work. My market research revealed there are some amazing platforms out there, but they fall short in two important ways:
1- They offer options to search by style and location, but not a way to combine these properties in one search.
2- They use AI to detect the style of a tattoo in a photo but don’t offer personalized recommendations to users according to smart style preference detection.
These two issues would become InkTank’s core features.
Personas
There are 3 personas that represent InkTank users: Rosie the artist, Benjamin the heavily tattooed client & Michelle, the first timer.
This separation proves meaningful when considering user flows. Benjamin comes onto the platform knowing exactly what he likes so his flow included a preference quiz to determine his style preferences right away and get him connected to the right artists. Michelle has no idea what she wants yet. Her flow skips the quiz so she can browse the tattoos feed and save inspiring images. The app’s detection algorithm will notify her when it has detected her preferences from her saved items and offer to personalize her experience.
Wireframes
Wireframing low and mid fidelity wireframes allows to examine issues of hierarchy & usability within a quick iterative process. Three features were wireframed: Preference quiz, Preference detection and search by Location & style.
Low Fidelity Quiz flow
Mid Fidelity Detection flow
User Testing
Once the core feature flows were clearly represented in a high fidelity grayscale prototype, they were tested on real users. This provided a lot of valuable insights. For example, people were confused by the navigation and different saving methods. They were also having trouble with the style menu being nested in the search bar. On the other hand there was a lot of enthusiasm about the potential of InkTank's features and it was clear there would be a market for it.
Core Features - Final Result
PREFERENCE DETECTION
Your style preferences can be detected using this quiz or by following your saved tattoos and artists. The app will be personalized accordingly.
STYLE MEETS LOCATION
You can quickly and easily discover artists you will love in a convenient location with a combination of the style preferences and search option.
