My role

UX/UI Designer.

Duration

5 months.

Context

This is a hypothetical project and was completed as part of a UX design programme at CareerFoundry.

Overview

Getting a tattoo is an incredibly personal experience. Tattoos represent and reflect elements of a person’s life in a visual way, from whimsical adventure to deep emotional connections. Therefore, getting a tattoo is a big decision.

Tattoos are a big market and it’s thought that 1.65 billion dollars are spent annually on them in the US alone, with 36% of 18-25-year-olds and 40% of 26-40-year-olds claiming to have at least one tattoo.

Problem

Even though many young adults have tattoos, an alarming 1-in-5 people with ‘ink’ regret some aspect of their tattoo. As a result, there was an opportunity to help users make better-informed decisions, to ensure that they get a tattoo that they love.

My task was to design a solution to help users discover inspiration for new designs; connect users with the best tattoo artists from around the world; and educate users about essential information before getting a tattoo.

Surveys and Interviews

The findings from the competitor research and analysis were then used to survey 15 participants (some had tattoos, others did not, but wanted to get one someday) about their experiences in the tattoo industry. Participants were selected through my own personal social media network and were conducted online.

Afterwhich, the survey results were used to generate interview questions, which were then used as part of 3 face-to-face interviews. Again, participants were selected through my own personal network.

Key Findings

Users without tattoos would want beginner information to be available, as they expressed that they would be open to getting a tattoo, but they wouldn’t know where to start or what questions to ask.

The most common reasons why users regret a tattoo are because they made their decision too hastily and/or they didn’t spend long enough researching the artist, as they found it too difficult to find out more information.

61% of users say that they use social media, most notably Instagram to find design inspiration for their new tattoos. The reason for this is that is a lot of high-quality content available to help with inspiration.

Users would want to consult an artist to get help and advice before getting a tattoo.

Lastly, 93% of users would only go with an artist/studio if they had good reviews. Is there work of high standard? Are they hygienic? What have they previously done?

Personas and User Journey Maps

Personas

The information gathered from the interviews was then used to create 3 user personas:

Gabriel has no tattoos and wants to find out more information about the tattoo industry so that he knows what to expect when he gets his first tattoo.

Hailey has a few tattoos and wants to find inspiration for her next design.

Mathilde has many tattoos and wants to add even more to her body. She only wants work from the very best artists and therefore she needs to know who she is dealing with beforehand.

User Journey Maps

After identifying the personas, user journey maps were used to better understand the more granular details of their goals. Each scenario was broken into small steps and the user’s thoughts and emotional experiences were documented. in the attempt to uncover useful insights that could help to determine which features would be useful for the target markets.

The features that I decided to focus on based on the research were:

Booking service and chat functionality between artists and users.

• Chat functionality was specifically chosen as getting a tattoo is emotional. A user needs to fully understand who will be tattooing them and therefore an instant chat functionality provides a more personal interaction as opposed to say, inbox messaging.

• A mood board so that users can save designs.

  • Mood boards are great for showing other people how something should be designed. It’s much easier to convey the style of image that’s inside your head via a mood board, than via just words.

• Essential information for newcomers in the form of guides and articles.

  • I decided to opt for guides and articles for newcomers. I think this format can produce content that is detailed and informative which can then be saved by the user for easy reference at a later.

User Flows  

After understanding who the users would be and what their needs were user flows were used to identify the number of screens that needed to be designed and developed for each persona to achieve their goal.  In hindsight, the use of user flows was very beneficial for the project overall. I sometimes have a tendency to get lost in the details of design and therefore mapping out the flow allowed me to take a leap backwards and look at things from a birdseye view to really understand what would be useful to my personas to help them solve their problems.

Card Sorting & Sitemaps

After the user flows were finalised I moved on to creating a first draft of the sitemap to outline the app hierarchy and to ensure that all screens were designed.

To validate my sitemap I conducted an open card sorting session to ensure that my site layout was logical to users. Open card sorting was selected over closed, as I did not want to influence the opinions of the participants. Therefore, users were free to assign the cards into groups that they had created.

Results

• 100% of participants grouped Artists, Studios, and Discover Artists together.

• 80% of participants felt that there was a connection between Tattoos and Mood boards and between Tattoos and Tattoo Styles.

• Participants felt as though there is a clear relationship between Articles and Videos, as 100% of participants grouped them together. Guides had a split between Articles and Videos and therefore I decided to place this in the same category.

• Settings and Upload a Photo were grouped together by 100% of participants.

• Settings, Profile and Upload a Photo were grouped by 80% of participants too. Therefore, I moved Upload a photo under the Profile section.

Bringing the designs to life

It was time to bring all of the previous components together to form an interactive prototype. As prototypes are cheap and quick to produce it makes them an excellent way to test if the app is functioning correctly and whether or not the product is user-friendly. I decided to keep the animation to a minimum and focused purely on making sure that each button reacted how it is supposed to - taking the user from point A to point B. Below is an initial idea of how users would book a tattoo session with an artist.

Final designs

After analysing the usability testing sessions and implementing the feedback which was received, it was now time to add the cosmetic UI details to the screens.

Personality

INK TANK should feel modern and stylish to reflect the audience and artists that will be on the platform. I've chosen sans serif fonts that are modern, yet highly legible as users need to be able to clearly read all the content that is present on the site. I felt that by using statement fonts, I would inadvertently draw the focus away from the beautiful imagery. 

Colours

Black and white are predominately used to provide a sleek design and to provide a neutral canvas for the beautiful imagery to take centre stage.

Red was chosen as a primary colour for INK TANK as it is known to promote love and passion. This is something that is very important, as users will hopefully find tattoos they love and therefore the colour red should heighten that experience. Red has also been shown to be a very effective CTA colour.

Accessibility

Accessibility is extremely important in design and that’s why all colours and typography used in the design adhere to WCAG 2.1 with a minimum score of AA.

Design Feedback

Once I had finished the design, I sought out feedback from users. One of the main findings was that users wanted more information about the artist after they had booked the session.

They wanted the full address of the studio, a date and time confirmation of the booking, and the ability to add the booking to a calendar to make it easy to remember when the appointment was scheduled for.

Retrospective

What Changes Would I Make?

I think that the guides section could be improved, as design-wise, it’s the weakest part of the platform. I slightly neglected this part of the project and therefore, I will continue to test more designs out so that it fits more coherently with the INK TANK design.

I would also look at incorporating an onboarding experience for new users. This could be achieved by asking new users various questions to determine what the user is after. INK TANK could then match recommend artists, articles, and videos to the user under a “For You” tab.  

I would explore incorporating AR technology so that users can view tattoo designs on their own skin and it would allow INK TANK to compete more with InkHunter.

Also, I would love to explore the same project again, but this time from the artist’s point of view. It would be fascinating to design how an artist would navigate the platform. What would they see? what would their onboarding experience be like? and explore the reasons why an artist would manage their appointments in INK TANK, as opposed to their traditional methods.

What Did I Learn?

I’ve learnt that it’s extremely valuable to spend time conducting thorough research and analysis, as this provides a foundation to the overall project and makes sure that the project is solving a genuine problem.

I have also learnt that it is beneficial to get the MVP finished and then receive feedback so that I know which areas I should be focusing on. Therefore, for my next project, I will set a deadline to complete the first draft of the design by and then I will then use the feedback that is received to refine the design.

Ideas for further exploration

Events Category

One of the main concerns for a tattoo app is that users will only use the app when they are looking for a tattoo. Once users have achieved this goal, they may not use the app for a while. One way to help solve this is could be to include an events category. This feature would let users know where and when the latest tattoo conventions will be held. The platform could also be used to sell expo tickets and a small commission could be charged to the event organisers when tickets are sold. This would provide an excellent revenue stream and give users another reason to keep using the app. This feature could be tested by seeing how many users are viewing events, how many are indicating that they will be attending an event and the number of tickets sold.

Videos

Another way to encourage users to keep using the app, is to flesh out the videos section and provide unique, cutting-edge content to keep users entertained. If the content is excellent, this should make more people want to get a tattoo and therefore this may lead to an increased number of bookings through the platform.

Thanks for reading! ✌🏽