What is StreetSmARTs?

Before

After

​Sirron Norris “Soy de Aqui”, 2019

Objective

​​The StreetSmARTs program is a partnership between the San Francisco Arts Commission and Public Works, which pairs artists with private property owners who have received Notices of Violation for the removal of graffiti on their buildings. In SF, the responsibility of graffiti removal is put on the building’s owner, so essentially if you don’t remove the graffiti from your building, you get fined. StreetSmARTs was created as an alternative solution, where murals can replace and prevent graffiti, while also beautifying neighborhoods in the process.

The number one goal of our 2 week design sprint was to expand this platform to be inclusive of all property owners in SF wanting to enhance their property with murals. The current process is a long, drawn out application, which needs to be reviewed before any action is taken. This could take long periods of time, and some aren’t even guaranteed acceptance.

My Role

In a team of 3 UX Designers, I focused on research where I conducted initial interviews, affinity mapping, user personas, and usability testing of mid-fi and hi-fi prototypes.

User Interviews

I began our research process by pulling in both artists and business owners and conducted user interviews where I explained the objective of our project. My goal was to gain a sense of understanding from both perspectives about their wants, needs, and motivations when it came to this type of business interaction. After the interview, I pulled several notable quotes:

User Interview Insights

All the data was then taken from the user interviews and made into 2 separate affinity maps, for both the artists and business owners. I was able to locate key insights and themes from each.

Artists want a place to:

Business Owners want a place to:

It's clear both artists and business owners would like a platform where they can communicate and reach out to one another in order to satisfy both their needs.

Personas & Problem Statements

Artist

Jack needs a way to find artistic opportunities in his community so that he can create pieces that viewers feel moved by while also paying his bills.

It became clear that we were not only going to be designing for two personas, but on two separate platforms as well since that's what users indicated they wanted. Mobile for on the go, convenient messaging & desktop for browsing.

Business Owner

Jill needs a way to discover and vet artists that meet her needs so that she can commission them to paint a mural on her property.

C&C Analysis

Since we’re designing for two different users, we wanted to focus on platforms that had two personas as well, such as Rover and Airbnb. We did a feature inventory for both competitors and comparators, so that way we can get an idea of what our platform should include.

User Flows

The artist would create a portfolio when signing up, so that way business owners can have an idea of their line of work. Once they find a business that agrees to hire them, they'd create a contract within the site.

Artist

The business owner has the option of posting a "gig" or can just browse through the different artists available. 

Business

Mid-Fi Wireframes

Mid-Fidelity mobile and desktop wireframes were completed in the sense that we wanted to see if users would be able to go through the entirety of both artist and business user flows on both platforms.

Mid-Fi Usability Testing

Our Purpose & Goal: find out if our product is meeting user's needs

Scenarios & Tasks: have each user go through and complete tasks as both Jack the artist and Jill the business owner
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Metrics: quantitative (success rate, time needed to complete tasks, number of errors) and qualitative (speak through their process)
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Most Common Issues: Mobile

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Most Common Issues: Desktop

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Synthesizing Our Data

For each user during usability testing, I recorded:

• whether or not they completed the task assigned

• the time it took to complete each task

• the number of errors taken for each task

The data shows us that:

• 100% of users were able to complete every single task that was assigned

• 50% of users made no errors at all

What does this tell us?

We have a very clear and simple user flow that was understood by most users.

But how about areas for improvement?

For the task "Sign up as a business", users spent about 6.8 seconds longer on the desktop than on the app, which was the only instance where users spent a longer amount of time on the desktop compared to the app.

What does this tell us?

Users were confused by the layout and amount of content on the sign up page.

Turning Insights into Something Actionable

Usability insights helped us make a foundational change in our Hi-Fidelity prototype.

We had the contracts and negotiation function within the chat feature, but this tested poorly.

In our Hi-Fi we added a contracts page in the main navigation bar, which tested well with users.

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Lessons Learned

This project gave me an understanding of the difficulties behind extending an already existing experience into a new platform, or in our case, into 2 new platforms. They each have different areas of focus and techniques when designing, so this was an eye opening experience.

I got the opportunity to take over UX Research and discovered that I have a lot of fun seeing the results of my work put into action. Not only that, but learning human behavior and motivators behind it was intriguing. 

Working closely with my team throughout these couple weeks was a memorable experience, and they made this intimidating process much more enjoyable. I was able to learn from each of their expertise and am looking forward to applying this new found knowledge in my future projects!

Next Steps

Despite all we were able to accomplish, there’s more work to be done. We’d love to:

• Prototype and do further testing with the desktop site

• Allow cross-persona journeys where we can allow artists to also be a business owner

• Build out Favorites, Notification, and Setting pages