ArtCycle: App Prototype.
When trying to develop an app, I aimed to create something I could see myself and my peers actually using. As a result, ArtCycle was born. I designed and prototyped an app meant for posting and searching for art supplies in your area; it would benefit artists looking to find supplies on a budget and artists looking to get rid of their old supplies through a zero-waste method.
A promotional video created with Adobe AfterEffects to advertise ArtCycle.
Video can also be found here: https://youtu.be/rebuFiMk0bM?si=g3fKPyk8pmWnAYi0
The first step of developing ArtCycle was creating the user personas for the app. After surveying my peers and prospective app users, I decided to create the personas of college student Melissa Wright and marketing assistant Jackson Simmons. More information about Melissa is featured below.
After I had developed the “who” for which I would be creating the app, I began the process for the “how” with Adobe Illustrator. This came as the color palette, logo, app icon, in-app icons, and the typography. I chose orange as my primary color because it invokes both creativity and calmness simultaneously, which is beneficial to artists. To keep the interface from being overwhelming, I paired the light and dark orange with slightly off-white and slightly off-black neutral colors to maintain the gentler feel of the app. For the typographic logo, I wanted a handwritten look because the app is centered around artists. As for the logo mark and app icon, I wanted to tie in the idea of recyclability and the color wheel. Thus, I imposed ROY.G.BIV within the confines of the iconic recycle arrows.
After completing the style guide for ArtCycle, I continued the process of “how” by creating the user flow of the app. From the start of the app to all of the pages in between, this step was important to figure out what would be necessary to include and design. There were minor changes between the creation of the user flow and the design of the app, but no changes major enough to affect the structure of either.
The final stage before moving to the full design of the app was to create wireframes for the screens I would need to include. I mapped out the login process across the top row, the item pages, search/filter, and item upload across the second row, the deals, favorites, and messages pages across the third row, and the settings along the bottom row. The light green arrows show the proposed flow between the screens.
I used these wireframes as an outline for my designs, not an exact copy. As time went along, I also came across necessities for screens or buttons that I hadn’t previously thought of before I was attempting to navigate through my prototype. I added these updates to my design, but since wireframes are merely a guideline, I did not reflect the additions back into them.