GlassGrab Product Design and Web Development

https://glassgrab.com/

GlassGrab is an e-commerce art marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of glass art. As the Product Design Lead I created the design system, branding, illustration, user experience and interface for the app using Sketch. I also designed and helped develop the website using HTML and a C# API. This project had an agile workflow with sprints and many iterations. I assisted with feature creation and development as well. Development began with brainstorming, wire-framing, storyboarding and prototyping to build out features. User feedback was then used to reevaluate and redesign the app. User feedback was generated using research including surveys, beta testers and social media marketing.

As the app grew, the design changed a lot so the app art was improved and made more sleek, modern and fresh.

GlassGrab Video Demo

This demo showcases various features of the app. Some of the features this video includes are

• Feed, following feed, followers, favorites

• Listings to buy or message the artist

• Art auctions, offers, specialized exclusive drop feature

• Automatic message creation and messaging based on bought and sold items

• User profiles, personal profiles that vary based on type of user, profile customization

• Search based on artist, keywords etc

• Filtering using categories, price point and type of listing

UX Development

The beginning of the process was identifying user personas backed by our knowledge and research within the community. I then came up with initial problem statements and a rough draft of a potential user flow. This then translated to storyboards for certain flows, wireframes and eventually prototyping. The evolution of the prototypes involved user feedback as well as user-data collected in the back-end. We used metrics such as user retention, user sign ups, and other KPIs to inform our design and feature creation decisions. We also used a large group of beta testers who gave us first hand experiences with the app. When we created a new feature, it was always thoroughly tested by tasking beta testers and gathering their feedback. I used Sketch and Invision to draft out screenflows and interactions.

The design process initially involved a lot of brainstorming in a collaborative group of engineers, sales, marketing, artists and designers. We connected with artists who were very involved in the industry and knew exactly what it was lacking and what their community wanted as buyers, as well as what they wanted as sellers. Through brainstorming with them and acquiring a few artists on the team itself, we came up with primary features that we knew we had to include and tested out multiple ways of displaying them. I lead the team on vision and branding as well as the UX and UI designs.

The market most heavily used Instagram, Facebook and Shopify to transact. This was a big issue because those sites did not permit this form of art on their platforms and did not allow selling directly. Thus the design problem was identified and analyzed to translate into our initial designs. Using inspiration from those large platforms as well as inspiration from other e-commerce apps such as Amazon, Grailed, Depop, Offerup, LetGo, Nike and other brands we designed and implemented a relatively crude MVP of GlassGrab and sent it to market.

Example User Study and Buy Flow

Initial designs

The initial designs directly correlate with the flow of a standard feed without specific feed elements or a journey involving algorithms. This was to be changed in the future with a curation algorithm, but the initial designs only reflected the flow of the MVP supported by the user research.

Intermediate Development

These designs were more user specific and customized. They include a user profile and a drop-style feature for large artists to drop a large quantity of work all at once. This feature was a suggestion from a glass artist on the team and was heavily supported by the community. The events sold out every time.

GRIP: The only legitimate payment processor for glass- art on the market.

We created GRIP knowing that the glass-art market had no place to safely and securely sell glass art. They were all on platforms that did not allow it and were transacting in grey areas with a lot of risk, scams and overall negative buying experiences. GRIP was created to change that.

We set out to create a process that solved the issues of the community, and we made design decisions based on where transactions went right and wrong in our previous versions of the app as well as from the large amount of data and user feedback we got. We then set out to educate our users using graphic designs that I created, as well as with a strong social media presence.

Our design decisions and feature creation was informed by the artists on our team as well as the users.

We asked what they wanted and delivered, then changed based on key metrics.

Our most important value was to constantly be changing, updating and improving the interface and listening to what the community was saying. From there we learned how to best display listings, how to direct people to what they wanted to buy, how to suggest listings and how to have the best flows for tasks that users may want to do.

Search Flow Example

This journey was created with the novice glass user in mind. It is simple to find a specific item but it also shows the user popular items, featured artists, suggested pieces and categories and the sort/filter modal.

Sign Up Example

This is an example of the development and iteration leading to the latest design of the login and sign up flow.

Add a listing simplified step by step flow

A great example of a complete change in design was the add a listing feature. We got feedback that this feature was confusing, people didn’t know what to put in the fields, and people often left out pertinent information. To solve this, we created a step-by-step flow utilizing dropdowns and selectable UI elements, as well as providing plenty of search suggestions. Finally, we added a clear indication of when fields were completed or lacking, had the next button disabled until the step was completed and had a visual of the entire process changing at the bottom of the screen.

GRIP Payment Processing Development

Website Development

The website is intended to be a simplified version of the app features.