ARRAY

UI DESIGN . COMPARATIVE RESEARCH . GRAPHIC DESIGN . TYPOGRAPHY
2 WEEK TEAM PROJECT . 2024
CLIENT : GENERAL ASSEMBLY - PERSONAL PROJECT

Final screens

2024

Project overview

Before receiving our brief, I had always viewed Moleskine as nothing more than a luxury notebook. That perception was quickly overturned. With an artist among us, we felt confident in our ability to push Moleskine into an entirely new space. Still, it was a long journey before our vision took shape as Array, our app

  • Challenges:

    • UI regulations – Navigating design constraints while ensuring a smooth user experience.

    • Brand alignment – Maintaining Moleskine’s identity while expanding into digital space.

    • Artist-centric design – Balancing aesthetics and functionality to meet creative needs.


  • Results:

    • Seamless user experience – Intuitive navigation and visually cohesive interface.

    • Authentic brand integration – Successfully translated Moleskine’s essence into a digital platform.

    • Fully customizable profiles – Artists can personalize their space to showcase their work uniquely.

Research

Surveys & Interviews

We launched a Google Survey to gather insights on app usage and Moleskine’s brand perception, selecting key candidates for in-depth interviews. Engaging with digital and traditional artists, poets, and hobbyists, we explored their needs, frustrations, and expectations for a new art-sharing platform.

Key Insights:

  • Moleskine’s perception – Many artists didn’t see Moleskine as a brand for them.

  • Current app usage – Users faced limitations with existing art-sharing platforms.

  • Creative community needs – Strong demand for a more inclusive and artist-friendly space.

  • Platform frustrations – Issues with discoverability, engagement, and customization.

  • Desired features – Interest in real-time feedback, curated content, and personalized portfolios.

Affinity mapping

We synthesised the qualitative data from our interviews and surveys into an Affinity Map to identify key themes. This helped us frame the core needs and desires of our target users.

Key Insights:

  • Discovery is essential- users want to find art that inspires them without being overwhelmed.

  • The desire for customisable profiles and portfolios to show their work.

  • Preference for a platform that enables the artist to save others work for future reference

User journey & How might we's

A key objective of our app was to address existing challenges, making the User Journey (pictured below) an essential tool for understanding the modern artist’s experience on social media in 2024. To ensure a clear and consistent direction, we centered this journey around Jamie as our focal point.

  • Low usability : The apps lack of any design system made its usability near impossible, it felt similar to an early stage wireframe than a finished design .

  • No design system : The app lacked a consistent visual identity. Fonts, icons and call to action buttons, there was far too much negative space which made it overall harder to navigate .

  • Language : Limited or unclear feedback for user actions (e.g., button presses or form submissions) leaves users unsure about the success of their interactions.

Site map & user flow

Before ideation, we established the app’s structure using a site map (pictured above). By analysing competitors and interview feedback, we outlined the framework. Given our limited time, we prioritized the most essential user flow (pictured above) to highlight what makes our app unique.

  • Defining the framework – Established the app’s core layout before diving into ideation.

  • Prioritizing user flow – Focused on the most crucial interactions to showcase the app’s uniqueness within our time constraints.

Visual development

Through our HMWs, we initiated a collaborative sketching session, where we mapped out different sections of the user flow we aimed to develop. Each of us spent two minutes sketching a specific part simultaneously before coming together to discuss the outcomes. By analysing each person's sketches, we identified key aspects to incorporate into our prototype. This process allowed us to conceptualize a portfolio page and determine a curation layout. Working together, we effectively combined ideas and refined our approach.

  • Challenges

    • Ensuring all team members contributed effectively within the time constraints.

    • Selecting the best ideas from multiple sketches without losing individual creativity.

    • Aligning on a cohesive user flow and layout direction.

    Results

    • Successfully mapped out key sections of the user flow.

    • Combined the strongest elements from different sketches to refine the prototype.

    • Developed a portfolio page concept and finalized a curation layout.

    • Strengthened teamwork and idea integration through collaboration.

Logo designing

  • confident Use of Artistic Skills: Applied years of artistic experience to confidently create mood boards and visual cues.

  • Enjoyable and Familiar Process: Found the process highly enjoyable and aligned with my creative strengths.

  • Collaborative Group Effort: Facilitated teamwork, allowing the group to exchange ideas and visualize a shared direction through curated images.

  • Encouraged Diverse Inspiration: Promoted sourcing images from a wide variety of places to capture the essence of key descriptive words.

  • Shaping the Visual Path: The mood board helped solidify the visual and creative direction for the project.

Moleskine colour scheme : I ended up bringing forward to the group that we should use Moleskines physical products as our reference points

  • Inspired by Moleskine’s timeless aesthetic, which evokes creativity, sophistication, and a tactile connection to design.

  • Aligned the colour scheme with the app’s branding, reinforcing a creative and premium experience.

Usability results

Usability-Driven UI Improvements:

  • Increased artwork visibility by reducing post margins, allowing users to view the art at a larger scale.

  • Replaced the ambiguous plus sign with a more universally recognized comment icon for better clarity and interaction.

  • Improved text readability by increasing the font size based on user feedback.

  • Streamlined profile information by removing the redundant bio section, as the 'About' section already provided relevant details.

  • Refined toolbar design by reducing the size of icons while maintaining the same clickable area for usability and accessibility..

Final Prototype

Next steps

What to move on to

  • Dive deeper into the research behind AI and how we could use filters on our site which would mitigate users not using the app because of lax AI rules

  • Meet up with our stakeholder

  • We have been fortunate enough to keep working alongside our stakeholder and are working weekly.

    Reflection : Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this project from start to finish. Working alongside Tom and Jaweria was an absolute pleasure, and I was chuffed with the outcome. I feel like we delivered a professional and compelling app, that I hope artists would be excited to use.