Digital platform Cifra

Learn my process that took a product that existed only as an idea into a live multipurpose digital platform CIFRA beloved by users. CIFRA is a place that combines streaming, a marketplace, and eduсation.

Our stakeholders idea was to provide everyone the opportunity to create a museum at home: fill their space with digital canvases, sculptures, sound installations, and experimental videos. And create a space for artists to curate their own virtual exhibitions, showcasing what they want, describing their creativity, and choosing how to monetize it.

My role

I led the project and was responsible for it's design from conception to product launch. To reach this point I had to work not only with my UX and UI skills, but also doing: stakeholder communication, market research, visual design and identity conceptualizing, and project launch planning, I worked together with an international team of developers, QA engineers, and a product manager to help the client bring the project to life.

Problems we are solving

During my interview phases, we refined which problems we wanted to solve with CIFRA:

• Difficulty finding transparent information on the dynamics of artists' work prices.

• Uncertainty about which artists to invest in (identifying those creating valuable, rare pieces versus repetitions and imitations).

• Collectors can't be sure they own a unique piece (artists often produce duplicates).

• Overpaying intermediaries (galleries, consultants) for expert information on the uniqueness and prices of works.

• Collectors want to buy art without intermediaries and at a lower cost.

• Buyers face high costs for insurance, storage, and transportation of art items, often eroding profit margins.

• Slow reselling of art; waiting at least 3 years to see a profit.

• Artists reluctant to sign lengthy exclusive contracts with galleries, leading to price management uncertainties.

• Artists want to exhibit without intermediaries to have creative freedom.

• Artists want to sell works directly for greater income.

  
  

Timeline

The project took 10 months from inception to product launch, with 3 months dedicated to research, 2 months for prototypes, and 3 months for design concepts. Product development began as soon as the initial prototypes were approved, allowing us to meet this short timeline.

Design challenges

How can I design a solution which would work well for a variety of different contexts and allow artists, curators and investors achieve their all their goals in one place?

How to propose a new way of consuming digital art and bring it to anyone house?

How to understand that we have achieved our results and we are going in the right direction, if product didn't exist before?

Process

It was crucial for me to establish a process that would enable the swift launch of the product while preserving its core values.

Discovery phase

Interviews

As the market is quite specific, I had to immerse myself in the subject and answer to the important questions. I conducted about 30 interviews with artists, curators, and art investors. The main questions that interested me were:

• Why do people buy art?

• What is the role of a curator in the art business?

• How do artists currently sell their works?

• Who determines the price of a piece?

• What does the ideal platform for art management look like?

• Attitude towards art streaming.

• What is important for investors to start buying digital art?

The result of this series of interviews was a presentation with insights and valuable information from the potential audience.

Workshops

To launch the project successfully, it was crucial to work synchronously with stakeholders, avoiding misunderstandings and communication issues.

To achieve this, at the mid-point of the project, I organized a workshop where, together with six representatives from the client's side, we attempted to approach the situation with a fresh perspective and with the valuable insights of the discovery phase. The result was new ideas for product development and hypothesis to be tested at this stage. Additionally, together we formulated a value proposition:

"CIFRA helps collectors and artists solve the challenge of earning from art ownership by providing the ability to broadcast art, generating royalties through views."

Competitor research

I wanted to understand the difference between our future product and others in terms of convenience, attractiveness, and demand. No big market assessments here – just focusing on what works and what doesn't.

I filled the table with the necessary criteria and rated how our competitors were solving the problem. That led to some hypotheses based on the newfound insights.

Discovery results

I defined the primary user stories for three user categories that the platform should serve: curator, artist, and investor.

I had a scope of user stories, here some examples of them:

• As an artist I want to participate in collaborations to expand the scope of my creativity.

• As an artist, I want to understand what place I have in the art field,
  to create adequate pricing and feel motivation for next work.

• As an artist I want someone to take over my promotion so that I can
  could devote more time to creativity

• As a collector, I want to get the best price for the work in order to feel loyalty and save money

• As a collector, I want to know the previous prices for which the work was sold in order to understand the adequacy of its value and investment attractiveness

• As a curator, I want to have all my work, articles, projects, and cv in one place so that I can share it with interested parties in one click

• As a curator, I want to compare artists in one place to save time on search and selection

  
  

Design phase

Since the feature scope was quite big, the project launch was divided into 6 iterations.

We acknowledged that after each stage, we could adjust our strategy and aimed to be responsive to market dynamics.

This approach also allowed us to start shaping the project architecture from a development perspective at this early stage.

Low fidelity

The primary screen displays a list of art. With metrics such as project score, smart followers, and date of discovery. This screens was designed to be transparent and scalable so that users would understand which functions they need to pay for in the product's paid version.

Based on the flow, I designed prototypes of the main scenarios and went to test it. First to stakeholders and development, then to potential users. We conducted 15 in-depth interviews and usability tests.

High fidelity

After the low-fidelity step was finished, I proceeded to the next step in which I designed a high-fidelity prototype and conducted UX studies on artists and curators.

The result is visible on the live platform itself on cifra.com

Delivery

Making sure that the final product works well. Once the product was delivered, we started collecting user feedback and monitoring main metrics. We received a ton of positive feedback from the potential audience and managed to move to the next steps of CIFRA development.

Takeaways

Thanks to the hard work and passion of my teammates, we were able to formulate key business metrics, create a solid UX, and set up an infrastructure for numerous new A/B tests. Here are some of the main takeaways we learned from this experience

1. Collaborate with developers and leadership early and often.

2. We needed to announce the new product before launch and create the waitlist page.

3. Take one thing at a time, and test it, test it, test it!