Duration: January 2016 - April 2016
Role: UX and Online Community Strategist, Student
Skills & Tools: Online Community Strategy, Prototyping in Illustrator
Client context : Collage.com
In their own words, “We're a technology company that makes Custom products easy for everyone.”
The Problem
How could Collage.com attract and retain artists in its new two sided marketplace?
Since our course focused on online communities, Collage.com asked us to come up with ideas and features that would help create and sustain an online community of artists. They would be part of a two sided marketplace with:
The artists and designers creating designs
Collage.com using these designs to customize products for their customers
Our Approach
We started with a competitive analysis to understand how Collage.com's direct competitors hosted the online communities on their websites.
We also did a comparative analysis of popular two sided marketplaces like AirBnB and Deviant Art.
We used the data provided by Collage.com as well as what we could find from websites like Quantcast to create our personas. These personas helped us define a set of goals for each type of user and helped us in the process of ideation.
Designing the Online Community
With two artists and a fan art enthusiast on board, we took to the white board with a creative fervor. We had a marathon, super fun, brainstorming session (the best I have been a part of) and came up with as many ideas as we could.
We sorted them into categories and drilled down to the final set using Desirability, Feasibility and Viability.
Our Recommendations
Build an online community for designers and artists: The business goal of Collage.com was to host a two sided marketplace where designers contribute to the designs available to the customers for customizing the products. Our first recommendation was that Collage.com could build an online community of designers that was visible to the customers. The platform also needed features that would allow the customers and the designers to interact.
Mockup for a designer's profile page
Seed this community with offline activities like Design Jams, Meetups or by creating a physical hangout space: Studies have shown that communities that start with or have continued interaction in an offline setting tend to form stronger bonds and have higher social capital than the purely online communities(there are exceptions to this, but does not apply to the designer community here). Thus, our second recommendation was that Collage.com seed this community by hosting offline activities like Design Jams, Meetups, and perhaps have a more permanent physical hangout space.
Create a physical hangout space for the artists (image courtesy: https://goo.gl/dFqsF0
Offer incentives that are customized to artists and designers : Incentives that are tailored to the artists' need and are also more exclusive tend to draw better artists and designers to the platform. We suggested that Collage.com host Design Challenges and provide different types of awards for customer favorites and designer favorites. We also suggested the awards were made special and took into consideration what the designers desire.
Offer ways for customers to interact and engage directly with the designers within the platform
Features that allow for interaction between the designers and the customers
Engage the community of artists and designers through collaboration: It is important for Collage.com to keep the Designer community active and engaged. Our recommendation was that Collage.com could facilitate online and offline design collaboration project to help form strong bonds among community members.
View our final report for details and references.