Ceramic Studio
A Digital Tool for Professional Ceramic Artists
My Role
UX Strategist • Researcher • Designer
Tools Used
Figma • Figjam • Google Suite
Competitive Audit • User Interviews • Rapid Prototyping - Feature Cards • User Journey Map • Quantitative Desirability Testing (Kano Analysis) • Mid and High-Fidelity Prototyping
Methodology
The Problem
How can I help?
The Background
A Lot to Track. Working as a professional ceramic artist can be very stressful because there are many different aspects of the business that require coordination and tracking. Ceramic Studio is a responsive web app that enables clay artists to quickly and easily track all aspects of their business and studio operations, so they can feel calm and organized.
The Challenge
A complicated process. Ceramic artists often create many different pieces at a time for multiple clients and galleries. This process involves tracking work through several stages of production, plus the management of time, materials and supplies, equipment, and business operations.
Ceramic artists try to find some semblance of organization by using a combination of wall calendars, notebooks, spreadsheets, and folders. Unfortunately, information is often spread out in different places, which leads to frustration and loss of valuable time that could be spent making art.
The Goal
To identify and understand the specific organizational needs of professional ceramic artists in order to develop a digital tool to track all aspects of the studio production business, so that artists can feel calm and organized, and reserve more time and energy for creativity.
The Process
How to approach the problem
An Iterative Process
In researching and designing the Ceramic Studio app, I implemented a three-phase iterative process to identify the specific organizational pain points of professional ceramic artists, to prototype a digital solution, and then to evaluate that solution with the target user group.
Identify
What, who, and why?
Knowing what I don’t know. Having worked for years as a professional ceramic artist myself, I had a very good understanding of the pain points experienced by clay artists in organizing studio production and business operations.
However, to be certain I wasn’t designing a product just for my own needs, I connected with other professional ceramic artists to get their thoughts and insights. Through contextual inquiries and user interviews, I gathered information about the pain points experienced by other ceramicists as they run their lives and businesses.
“Projects, time, and materials? I lose track of all of those things!” -L.M.
The Users
Busy People. Ceramic artists are very busy. Out of the eight professional artists I interviewed, seven of them also work second jobs as professors, kiln technicians, substitute teachers, and studio assistants. Not only do they juggle their own studio schedules, they also coordinate other work, academic, and family calendars as well.
So when commissions or shows are scheduled, ceramic artists need to look at multiple calendars, see what other obligations exist, and then determine how and when they can work through the completion of a project.
Artist and professor, Kelly Connole in the classroom.
To illustrate this overall business flow, I created a journey map showing a project from inception to delivery.
Process inside a process inside a process. Part of what makes scheduling difficult for ceramic artists, is that within the overall business flow, they also need to coordinate their studio production processes. Ceramic pieces need to move through stages: create, dry, fire, glaze, fire again, document, pack and deliver. Throughout production, artists need to track their time, materials, supplies, and kiln firings. They usually start with a delivery date and then work backwards to set deadlines for themselves. Now imagine multiple, overlapping projects being produced at the same time. Factor in time and material constraints, and this is when artists can get overwhelmed.
Information everywhere and nowhere. Artists try to find some semblance of organization by using a combination of wall calendars, notebooks, whiteboards, spreadsheets, and folders. The problem is that this information is often spread out in several different places, which can lead to frustration, loss of information, and a waste of valuable time that could be spent making art.
What digital tools exist for this problem? While some ceramicists I interviewed used spreadsheets to track their production, none of them used apps. To understand what already existed in this problem space, I identified five websites and apps, and conducted a competitive audit on these to identify which, if any, were relevant to our problem space. Five of these tracked specific stages of production, like glazes or firing. Only one, CeramicSpace had broader capabilities, but it lacked a calendar and document storage, and it was confusing to use. Read the COMPETITIVE AUDIT HERE.
Bottom line: there’s got to be a better way…
Prototype
What is the solution?
Rapid Ideation. The next step in formulating a solution was to conduct rapid ideation for twelve possible features for a mobile app. In order to determine which features would be most advantageous for the user group, I created feature cards and conducted a Kano survey administered through Google Forms. Read the survey results here.
Kano Results and an Architectural Diagram. The survey was meant to help choose a couple of features to develop. What I found instead, was that nearly all of the features were considered to be “attractive” features, meaning the users wanted and needed all of them. This was my “Oh, crap” moment, because I realized that instead of designing just one or two features, as I had originally planned, I needed to build out the whole architectural diagram, because all of these features were important and interrelated.
Summary of Research and the Survey
Research showed that ceramic artists need to track many different aspects of their businesses and production in order to feel organized. However, 7/10 of those users surveyed said they did not currently use mobile apps or software in their studios. A review of the data and feedback led to the following criteria for designing the solution.
A digital solution needs to be:
• User friendly
• Customizable
• Adaptable
• Accessible on mobile and laptop
• Have printer capabilities
• Synch with other calendars
The app needs to track:
• Multiple Calendars
• Gallery contracts
• Installation details
• Materials and supplies
• Product Inventories
• Sales
• Social Media Promotions
• Production Schedules
Evaluate
How Does This Function?
Once I created a mid-fidelity prototype, I conducted usability tests with four user participants. Based on their feedback, I added additional equipment tracking, as well as the ability to upload and send documents and photos.
“My first impression is that this feels friendly. Every time I open a spreadsheet, I feel like ‘ughh.’ This is not that!” -K.C.
"Tracking equipment is really important. Ever since Covid, it has been harder to get kiln parts. It would be nice to have that in here.” -M.L.
Next, the fidelity of the prototype was increased to high-fidelity. To highlight a happy path, a persona of a ceramic artist named Peter was used, in order to illustrate how the app functions for its users. A video walkthrough shows this interactivity of the prototype.
Design Rationale
Details Explained
To illustrate and explain the rationale behind specific design decisions, an annotated slide deck was created of some of the key screens. READ THE FULL DECK HERE.
Next Steps
Adding and Refining Features
One of the more complex features of this app is the production schedule. I’m excited to dive in on refining that next, since it would be really helpful for artists in planning and saving time. I would also like to make it mobile responsive. Even though over half my users said they prefer an app that works on all devices, clay artists rarely have laptops in their dusty studios, so it would be useful to have it on phones. Voice activation could be another great feature to add, since ceramic artists often have messy hands.
In Retrospect
Complex Design Problems
One of my toughest challenges on this project was laying out the architecture of the site in a way that made sense for the flow, since the production and business processes are so interrelated.
I also had to problem-solve ways to make the app user-friendly and adaptable for all the different ways ceramic artists work, which can involve various types of clays, glazes, temperatures, and kiln types and sizes.
Finally, being a user myself, I had to be careful not to let my own background overly influence my design choices.