A landscape painter based on the east coast. Ian is connected to the Bowery Gallery in New York, and until recently has shown his portfolio on their website.
Sole UX Researcher / UX Designer responsible for end-to-end design and development of the site
January 2022 - February 2022
Adobe XD, Figma, Webflow
Ian’s current website was not functioning and he was looking for a way to display his work in a curated online platform
Create an online portfolio that allows users to quickly navigate through Ian’s work, and contact him about projects and upcoming shows
Before beginning on the ideation phase of the design process, I wanted to ensure that I had all of the client’s goals for the project laid out. We spent our first meeting discussing what features he wanted included in the website, and I presented him with examples of current portfolio sites that he gave his opinion on. This conversation outlining the desires of the client allowed me to focus my ideation around features that would be the most useful for users while making sure that the client was satisfied by the content displayed.
After speaking with Ian about his goals for the project, I outlined 3 main guidelines:
Ian wanted a simple layout to each page, that would place the user’s focus on the artwork rather than add distraction
We decided to divide Ian’s work into 3 main categories: landscapes, drawings and still-lifes. To reduce clutter we will only display work completed in the past 2 years.
Ian is connected to the Bowery Gallery, and wants links to their site and upcoming events attached to his portfolio.
During the early ideation process I created many paper wireframes to layout the pages of the site. This helped me visualize design ideas before spending the time to create them digitally and pass them off to the client for approval.
After completing the paper wireframes and settling on a final design, I created low fidelity digital wireframes to display the site layout for the client. Based on the guidelines I was given I came up with the following design decisions:
After multiple meetings with the client to refine the design, I created a high-fidelity prototype to finalize the design before moving on to designing in Webflow. By connecting regularly with the client I was able to fulfill their needs and ensure that they felt heard throughout the design process. The main changes I made to my designs are as follows:
Communicating regularly with Ian throughout the design process allowed him to feel heard and helped him understand the design decisions that were being made. Especially during collaborative work it is critical that I am able to articulate design decisions and defend them while presenting alternatives. This project gave me regular practice with presenting and explaining my decisions to clients.
During this project I checked in many times with the client to receive feedback on design decisions and ensure that we were headed down the right path, and that led to a lot of changes to the design throughout the process. Fortunately, I had spent a lot of time wireframing before making digital protoypes so I did not have to backtrack too often, but there were moments when I tasked myself with completely redesigning pages (the homepage, for example) because the layout looked differently on paper than it did on the screen. This constant iteration ensures that the designs I ended up with are well thought through and satistfy the client’s needs.
Reach out about opportunities or just to say hi!
