ARTKIVE MOBILE APP PROTOTYPE
Critical Research & Practice
For this project, I explored the progression of traditional illustration. I wanted to explore the question 'is traditional art still relevant today?' For the project, I wanted to create a platform where traditional artists can share their work, communicate with each other allowing them to collaborate thus building their own community.
Since this was a self-initiated brief, I had a lot of responsibilities as I would have to work on all the tasks alone. For example, I had to build a brand identity, research how far traditional art has come and create a working app prototype on Adobe XD. To start with, I researched the progression of traditional art, from cave paintings to street art, I wanted to analyse some of the most famous paintings. I also looked at how traditional illustration is being used in movies, video games and the different techniques used to create illustrations traditionally.
As I progressed through this project, the biggest problem for me was that sometimes the wireframing was confusing as the links were all over the screen which made it harder for me to see which wireframe was actually connected for the buttons to function. I was also given feedback constantly, which meant that I had to keep updating the page designs and this meant replacing the wireframes for the prototype to function. What I did was create the pages altogether and then connect them together using the wireframes.
One of my main goals for this project was to create an appealing user interface while also creating a captivating experience for users. This was an important target for me as I wanted the app prototype to be ready for testing. I decided to change the colours of the interface to only black, white and grey because the user has to be focused more on the content that the app has instead of getting overwhelmed with colour on their screens.
When I was coming up with ideas of creating a brand identity, I had some ideas in mind but the one name that stood out the most was 'Artkive'. This was a play on words as two words were mashed together (art and archive) to make this name. 'Artkive' means allowing the user to store their traditional art online as posts. Because this was an app, I had to have iconography so that users have more of a visual experience.
Placing the icons on the page was something I constantly found difficult as I had to create the same type of appeal that social media apps like Instagram and Pinterest do, therefore, I had to find some inspiration for the UX design of those apps and then try and find the perfect layout for my app.
The layout of my app was a mixture of both Instagram, Pinterest and Behance. The typography for the app was easy to choose as most of the apps now have modern typefaces and are sans-serif types. Because of this reason, I chose a similar typeface that is easy to read and clear.
I was more than happy with how the app prototype worked out in the end as it felt like I could test out the prototype I created online and see what the users thought of it. I mostly received positive feedback on the way the app functioned and then some pointers on what I could have improved on. I worked hard to produce the research material, and was able to answer my own question which was 'is traditional art still relevant today?' with some evidence to back my answer. Lastly, I was content with the amount of work that I produced for this project.
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Check out the Artkive App Prototype in the link here;