Context
Tools
Team
Personal Project
Figma, Adobe Suite, Procreate
AD: Caitlin Kreinheder ST: Derek Martin CW: Cameron Norman CBM: Alex Smith Scales
Role
Skills
Timeline
Experience Designer, Squid Master
Wireframing, Research, Strategy, UX/UI, Illustration
Round 1: 15 Weeks Round 2: 5 Weeks
Background
More people are getting tattoos than ever before.
The tattoo industry is growing, with one-third of Americans having ink and the industry expected to hit $4 billion by 2030.
Insight
Getting your first tattoo is challenging.
Deciding on a tattoo design is difficult. Especially someone’s first one. Most people aren’t familiar with the different styles, and often turn to Google for inspiration.
Even after deciding on a design, many first time clients run into problems booking an artist. The process of researching styles, deciding on a design, and booking an artist can take months or longer. Beginners can easily be deterred by the many roadblocks, and some give up the search entirely - remaining inkless.
Opportunity
Closing the gap between inspiration and booking will drive action.
Inkpool
An app that not only inspires first time clients, but also drives them to action by centralizing and streamlining the tattoo booking process.
App Walkthrough
Introductory Quiz + Home
In order to help inspire our users, we first need to know their likes and dislikes.
Users can opt into taking a short quiz that helps our algorithm establish a home page complete with an infinite number of ink-spirations to look through.
Ink-spiration
If users click on an an ink-spiration they like, they will be able to zoom in on the art. They will also be able to see information about the tattoo such as the name of the artist, how much it cost and the style of it.
Users will also be able to tag the tattoo artist and redirect traffic to their page.
Profile and Canvases
Users will be able to create unique canvases to help in the tattoo exploration and inspiration process. Canvases can be sorted however the user chooses, whether that be style of tattoo or body part.
After creating a canvas the user will have the option to tab between personalized homepages with inspiration based off the canvas.
AR Filter
Our users want to know what a tattoo would look like on their skin before they commit to it, so we developed a simple AR feature to isolate tattoos from photos within the app, an try it out on their body.
Booking Quiz
Recommended Artists
After completing the quiz Inkpool will generate recommended artists for the user. Users can then peruse each artist’s page and determine who to reach out for bidding on a specific tattoo.
An artist's page will be slightly stylistically different from a users page. Users pages prioritize curation, while artists pages showcase their work and promote bidding.
Bidding
After choosing a preferred artist, users will be allowed to submit a bid. This short questionnaire was designed through interviews with tattoo artists to ensure they’d have all the information they’ll need to accept or deny a bid.
Booking
Once an artist has accepted a bid, users will have access to an artist’s calendar and can set up an appointment. Additionally, artists and users will now be allowed to message directly through Inkpool should they need to reschedule or discuss more about the appointment.
Feed back and User Testimonials
Users responded EXTREMELY well to this project. We had multiple people reach out and express interest in downloading the app, and urging us to make it a reality.
Process
To gain more insights about the current pain points of the tattoo booking process, we conducted a survey and sent it out to participants in the Richmond Virginia area. The survey received over 120 responses. The questions within the survey have been included below.
Some of the Key findings from our survey were
55% of respondents described the process as overwhelming and confusing.
Just 2% of respondents described the process as seamless.
The majority of the users we interviewed were extremely interested in Inkpool. However, a key concern we noted on our survey is that users were afraid that tattoo artists would not sign up to the platform. In order to guarantee the success of Inkpool tattoo artist buy in would be vitally important.
In order to assure our users we reached out to over 30 tattoo shops in the Richmond area, conducted 3 interviews with tattoo artists, and attended a tattoo convention.
Some key findings were that tattoo artists would be more inclined to buy in if the app addressed their existing problems with new customers having a lack of knowledge, being able to connect with their contemporaries, and getting their name out to new clients who aligned with their shop ethos.
After our interviews we were pleased to find that if we addressed these pain points in the existing process, tattoo artists would be interested in joining Inkpool.
Feedback on Inkpool's Prototype (aka things we were wrong about)
When we interviewed users our team realized some of the questions in our original quiz could be off putting if a user is just beginning the tattoo inspiration process .
This led us into breaking the flow of the app into two separate sections - inspiration and booking.
We thought that bright colors would create a colorful, comforting space for users who are intimidated by traditional tattooing spaces - but users we tested got overwhelmed by all of the bright colors in the initial prototype of Inkpool.
Aggregating user feedback led to an updated user persona. While our initial prototype included walk ins and spontaneous ways to get a tattoo we realized through feedback that our our core user base are Type A planners. Increased options to plan ahead are key.
With our updated user insights and confirmation of artist buy in - the early design work on round 2 could begin.
Before designing, I white boarded individual flows and created wire frames in Figma for a seamless transition to the final design.
Reflections
This project is really special to me. It was the first real UX project I tackled while I was in school, and it was the last UX project I revisited before I graduated. While I reviewed it was really fun (and a little bit cringey) to see the design decisions I made the first time around. That being said, it was actually incredibly gratifying to see how much I've grown.
I can't wait to look back on this project in the future and see how much I've grown from here!