Eric Opoku Design Portfolio
Online Marketplace for Artists
Role: UX Researcher & Designer
Timeline: 4 weeks assigned project
A mobile-first platform that helps emerging artists upload, showcase, and sell their work online. The opportunity was to simplify onboarding, enabling artists to transition from social media to launching an online store. I led the project end-to-end, from research and ideation to prototyping and usability testing.
Problem Statement:
Emerging artists often struggle to launch online stores because the setup process requires multiple tools, unfamiliar decisions, and limited guidance. This complexity can delay store creation, reduce confidence, and increase onboarding abandonment, limiting artists’ ability to begin selling and the platform’s ability to activate new sellers.
How Might We Statement:
How might we help emerging artists simplify the process of setting up, pricing, and managing their online art sales so they can confidently focus on creating art while achieving consistent business growth?
Methods:
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Conducted user interviews with emerging artists to understand their experiences transitioning from social media to online selling
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Distributed surveys to identify common behaviors, goals, and recurring pain points
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Performed competitive analysis of art marketplaces and e-commerce platforms to evaluate onboarding, pricing support, and visibility features
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Developed a persona (Eva Jones) and journey map to synthesize user behaviors, motivations, and frustrations
User Interviews & Synthesis:
Conducted structured interviews to understand how emerging artists approach selling online.
Insights were synthesized into key themes of pain points, motivations, and behaviors, revealing challenges in onboarding, pricing, and visibility. These findings informed persona development and guided design decisions.
Key Insights & Takeaways:
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Complex setup discourages adoption:
Artists find onboarding time-consuming and fragmented, causing frustration and drop-off.
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Pricing uncertainty limits confidence:
Many rely on guesswork or peer comparison, making it hard to confidently list and sell their work.
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Visibility is disconnected from sales:
Artists depend on platforms like Instagram for exposure but lack easy ways to convert engagement into purchases.
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Business tasks disrupt creativity:
Managing pricing, logistics, and promotion takes time from creating art.
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Lack of integrated tools increases friction:
Using multiple platforms for selling, marketing, and fulfillment creates inefficiency and overload.
How Insights Shaped the Design
Research insights directly shaped the onboarding flow. Fragmented setup informed a single guided journey from account creation to store launch. User uncertainty led to progress indicators, clearer button states, contextual guidance, and feedback, while the need to connect visibility with sales informed the artwork-upload and personalized storefront steps.
Persona
Eva Jones is an emerging artist who wants to sell her work online but feels overwhelmed by the setup, pricing, and promotion required to successfully launch and grow her business.
Motivations / Goals
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Gain global visibility by sharing her artwork with a wider audience
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Generate sustainable income through selling her art online
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Build confidence in pricing, promoting, and selling her work
Behaviors
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Creates artwork consistently and spends long hours refining her craft
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Shares artwork on social media to attract attention and feedback
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Learns independently through tutorials and peer advice
Pain Points
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Overwhelmed by complex store setup and unclear pricing strategies
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Struggles to gain visibility and promote her work online
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Finds logistics and order management difficult to handle alone
Experience Map
This journey map shows Eva’s steps and struggles as she tries to sell her art online, revealing where support and simplification are most needed to guide her toward a confident and successful start.
Design Process
Research insights were translated into a persona (Eva Jones) and an experience map to understand user behaviors and pain points, informing key onboarding flows. I explored ideas through sketches, refined them into solution concepts, and developed mid-fidelity wireframes and an interactive prototype in Figma. Usability testing guided iterations that improved clarity, navigation, and user confidence. This process is reflected in the task flow diagram below, which maps the core user journey and decision points.
Ideation: Exploratory to Solution Sketches
Inspiration: The UI inspiration board below features mobile interface examples for onboarding and store setup to inform Praxis's design.
These exploratory sketches below illustrate the early concept development for the Praxis onboarding flow. They map how users move from account creation to profile setup, artwork uploads, and finally launching a personalized online store.
These solution sketches above translate the exploratory ideas into a clearer onboarding workflow. They illustrate how users create an account, personalize their profile, upload artwork, and complete the steps required to launch their online store.
Wireframing to User Testing
Prototype
Version 1:
Prototyped wireframes (Prototype V1 )were tested across five onboarding tasks to evaluate clarity, usability, and flow.
Users completed the early steps successfully but encountered friction with artwork uploads, button states, limited guidance, and AI-assisted features. These issues reduced confidence during the more complex stages of onboarding.
The findings informed improvements to clarity, feedback, and visual hierarchy, while AI-related concerns were deferred for further iteration and testing. Future revisions would introduce clearer explanations, stronger user control, and a manual alternative.
Prioritization Matrix
High-impact, low-effort fixes like guidance, feedback, and progress indicators were prioritized. More complex improvements, such as AI clarity and reducing fields, were identified for later iterations.
Seamless Setup Process
The final solution is a guided mobile onboarding experience that simplifies store setup for emerging artists.
Users move from sign-up and verification into a guided personalization flow where they select or generate a profile photo and upload or confirm three artworks. Supported by an AI assistant and clear progress indicators, the flow culminates in a fully personalized store ready for use, enabling users to confidently launch and manage their online presence.
Outcome
The redesigned onboarding streamlines store setup into a clear, guided flow with progress indicators and contextual support. Usability testing identified friction in artwork uploads and AI-assisted steps, informing improvements to clarity and guidance. If implemented, success would be measured through onboarding completion, step-level drop-off, and time to launch a store.
Key Learnings:
1. Simplicity is essential for reducing overwhelm
Building on the need for simplicity, emerging artists feel anxious when faced with complex or unfamiliar tasks. A guided, step-by-step workflow significantly improves their confidence and willingness to complete the process.
2. Clear communication drives user confidence
Users rely on microcopy, visual cues, and feedback. Unclear instructions or button states cause hesitation.
3. Hierarchy and clarity enhance usability
Consistent spacing, clear selection states, and predictable layouts help users stay oriented, while poor visual structure repeatedly emerged as a barrier during testing.
Next Steps:
1. Optimize high-fidelity UI for accessibility
Optimize spacing, define selection states, highlight progress indicators, and establish a clear visual hierarchy to instill confidence and minimize cognitive load.
2. Elevate onboarding through targeted feedback
Add tap-activated helper text, persistent inline guidance, and clear success or error messages to support users through every stage of the mobile experience.
3. Broaden user testing across diverse audiences
Confirm improvements, verify accessibility, and collect insights from artists with varied skills, workflows, and technical backgrounds.