Project Overview

The Product

Zero Illustration is an online digital art marketplace where the user will be able to buy high quality 3D illustrations that come with 7-8 color variants and customizable orders specific for Website. Normally it is complex to build high quality 3D assets using 3D software. Here the user can either buy the ready-made assets or can order a customized illustration.

Project duration

August 2021 - September 2021

Problem

Lack of online 3D illustration resources.

Specific 3D skills are required to make high quality 3D illustrations.

Building eD illustrations requires a decent amount of hours of work, to do the modeling, texturing, lighting and rendering.

The Goal

Design a marketplace for Zero Illustration that allows users to buy easily and have great experience having high quality 3D illustrations.

My Role

UX designer designing the Zero Illustration Marketplace from scratch to prototype.

Responsibility

Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.

Process

I follow a design thinking approach to structure the process. Design thinking is a creative process to understand the users, challenge assumptions, redefine the problems and create innovative solutions by prototype development and tests that involve 5 phases.

User Research

During the empathize phase the main goal is to answer these 3 core questions:

Who?

Who is the 3d illustration buyer?
What age group of people will use this product?

Mainly web UI designers who want to use 3D illustrations to their designs.
it's hard to specify the age group here, but they are trendy designers.

Where?

Where the service will be provided?Mobile, tablet or desktop?

Full online (international)
Web Designer mainly use desktop.

What?

What do you think about 3d illustration marketplace?
What type of illustration do you like?
What are the main problems you are facing?

Feeling excited, want to use 3d illustration in their design
It depends on the client budget and on the story that one wants to explain trough the design.

Competitive Analysis

I found that most of the competitors are established companies. Thay have a strong foundation of user experience. But I also realized that the assets’ quality is big factor in this industry. Designers are not depending on only one platform.

Persona

Empathy Map

I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I’m
designing for and their needs. A primary user group identified through research
was web designer who wants to buy 3D illustration assets to use on their projects.

Pain Points

3D Skills

Learning 3D software is a professional skill that many designers don’t have because it is not their central role.

Time Management

Even many designers know how to use 3D software, creating 3D assets is time consuming because of the several steps involved: 3D modeling, texturing, rendering.

Lack of Quality

Although out there some platforms selling 3D assets, either these are overly used or of low quality.

Storyboard

User Flow

What user should be able to do?

Finding the right 3D illustration.
Having a good and secure digital asset purchasing experience
Can request custom.

Paper wireframe

Before jumping into the low fidelity wireframe design, I did the main brainstorming on paper to have a first visual idea.

Digital wireframes

Low-fidelity prototype

I created a low-fidelity prototype to illustrate the primary user flow and to be used for the usability study.

View LF Prototype

Usability study: findings

When I conduct the usability study for Zero Illustration, the users were able to complete the full process without any interruption. As they are also web designers, they are easily compatible with this flow. They appreciated this prototype, although some feedback highlighted points that could be improved.

Round 1 findings

For making a custom request, the flow before redirecting to sending e-mail could be better.

Refining The Design

After having the feedback, I thought it made sense to create this pop up. This window will pop when anyone clicks on the “custom request”. Here the user can add the description and attach a reference file.

System Design

Mockups

High-fidelity Prototype

Using the completed set of digital wireframes, I created a high-fidelity prototype, ready for the second round of usability studies.

View HF Prototype

Accessibility considerations

Make easy the checkout
process

Filter and search options that help the user to find illustrations according to his needs

Accessible color and fonts are available on system design

Going Forward

Impact

User can have high quality 3D illustration assets that save their time.

What I learned

I love to do 3D designs, for me it was really fun to do this whole project. I got new ideas for 3D illustrations when I was conducting the custom request research. For example, it could be a library set and the user can modify it esily by himself.

Next steps

Although usable as is, next I will build a drag and drop options where all the illustration’s elements would be in a library, and the user can customize the asset by himself.

Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need.

Thank you for your time reviewing my Zero Illustration Marketplace!

Zero Illustration

Simul Sarker