The Task:
After conducting user surveys with former and current users, My goal for this new interface was to simplify viewing and sharing artists' work and notifications.
The Challenge: Reduce the amount of clicks in order to navigate through the site in order to prevent fatigue on the eclipse interface.
Target Audience: Professional and hobbyist artist
Why DeviantArt?: As a former user of the site for over 20 years, I watch the website's decline. The issues brought up by many of the users are echoed by myself. I want nothing more than to see the company that helped me grow as an artist and designer to succeed. Having the experience and familiarity with it's user mad for a intuitive time working with different areas of user research.
Role: UX Researcher & UI Prototyper
Method: User Survery and Interviews conducted to help initial redesign
Approach: After several phases of interviews and research, wireframed and prototyiping was created to started a new usuer interfacing.
Became more modern like other social media. However to users and had mixed reviews.
DeviantArt’s concept of “Breed and bleed art” is not taken seriously due to the inclusiveness of all types of artwork.
Mature content and not safe for work (NSFW) is easily accessible to minors and casual visitors.
DeviantArt's lack of censorship gave the site a bad reputation and is discouraged from being used for professional use.
Freelance Artist
Hobbyist Artist
57% of Users
In both user interview and surveys, frequent user to the site had issues recieving and removing notificationsfrom their inbox. This has been constant issue on the site since the Eclipse UI was first introduced.
Tumblr: Friendly Interface that has many colors themes for fun and personalization.
Artstation: Focuses on featuring polished Artworks in as much space as possible.
Pixiv: Keep the interface simple and open toallow for ease of finding a specific topic of art.
Challenge: Seprating out the various deviation types via the submision process makes easier.
Chats and Notes have a similar function and are overlapped on top of each other when checking these notifications making it very confusing.
Homepage
Singular images submitted by a user have been designed as a collapsible panel.
The design allows the user to comment on a deviation without moving from the home page. A collection of images can be viewed in a carousel.
Submitting Artworks From The Homepage
When on either the homepage or the explore page, a user can submit Art quickly using the angular green button to the right side of the screen. Once clicked, the user will have options for submitting artworks.
Homepage
Singular images submitted by a user have been designed as a collapsible panel.
The design allows the user to comment on a deviation without moving from the home page. A collection of images can be viewed in a carousel.
Submitting Artworks From The Homepage
When on either the homepage or the explore page, a user can submit Art quickly using the angular green button to the right side of the screen. Once clicked, the user will have options for submitting artworks.
Highlights artists who have created art in the communities via deviations, groups, and forums.new users, and finally trending artists. The arrangement of these profiles gets the user to discover more artists as they continue to engage with the site. Daily Deviations are images selected by the staff that showcases excellent art in the community. They will be featured front and center at the top.
I created an organized system to allow users to manage messages with ease. I’m still working on incorporating a feature that allows users to remove all messages at once.
Taking a deep dive into the design of an existing interface makes me understand and appreciate why design decisions were made. The main issue with Eclipse’s current interface is that things need to continue being developed into a more user-friendly experience.
I decided to call my redesigned version of the interface “Solar Eclipse." A solar eclipse represents determination and connections while embracing change. I want the site and the interface to be as successful as possible for its users. To do this, it’s important to keep shedding light on the issues and change for the better of the collective. The next step moving this project forward is to refine the interface is to continue editing the Solar Eclipse Interface and begin the second wave of user testing.
