Tattoo, Inc.
An inclusive tattoo marketplace to connect bespoke tattoo artists directly with customers
Context
Tattoo, Inc. (name TBD) is a startup based in San Francisco, CA on a mission to become the largest global platform for the tattoo industry. The tattoo industry has a 1.8 billion market size with a 3.5% growth rate to increase as of 2020. 35% of Americans have tattoos, up from 29% 2 years ago, and 21% 6 years ago. Our team was tasked with creating a mid-fidelity, interactive web application prototype for the client.
Problem
There is a rapidly growing demand for tattoos but customers do not have a marketplace to easily connect with bespoke tattoo art and artists. The tattoo industry is lacking pricing transparency and is not inclusive of all users. Users need a central location to find and book tattoo artists with the option to filter by pricing, style, location, and specializations.
Role
UX/UI Designer
User Research
Wireframes
Usability Testing
Prototyping
Visual Design
Time Frame
3 weeks
Team
3 UX Designers
Research Goals
Validate market information and potential of marketplace product for the client
Gain insight into the current marketplace and customer habits
Decipher the gap between tattoo customers and artists
Business Plan
The clients business plan included a proposal for a subscription model. We had difficulty conceptualizing a monthly or annual plan for tattoos since most users get tattoos infrequently or on a whim. After brainstorming and research, we decided to explore subscription plans for removals and touch ups.
We also did market research on indirect competitors like WTHN, an acupuncture studio in NYC that offers memberships. This helped us decide to offer incentives to members, including 10% off additional tattoos or body piercings.
Credits: https://wthn.com/pages/acupuncture
Screener Surveys
I quickly drafted a test plan and our team sent out screener surveys to find user interview testing participants. After several hours posting on Facebook, Instagram, Slack, and getting banned from several subreddits, we received 109 responses. Respondents were:
Age: 18–58
Gender: 54.8% Female, 39.8% Male, 5.4% Non-Binary
Location: Worldwide
Our first round of screener survey received 18 responses. We had to post a second screener survey to remove personal identifiable fields to increase trust upon participants to which we received 91 responses. Below is data from the second round:
How users are finding artists:
39.6% Instagram
24.2% word-of-mouth
19.8% locally
8.8% Google
It was immediately clear to us that this process could be streamlined to include all of these components through location filters, social sharing, reviews, and a robust search engine.
Reddit users had strong opinions about our survey…
Ultimately, the negative feedback we received was very helpful and lead us to two main questions:
Why are users gravitating towards Instagram?
We found users were gravitating towards Instagram due to the search capabilities, personal connections with artists, and most importantly tagged photos from real customers.
How can we convince artists to join our platform and best support them?
Subscription plans could help convince artists to join our platform as it gives artists a recurring revenue stream. Allowing artists to sell flash work directly on the platform will also give artists a passive income stream.
Competitive Analysis
We evaluated several direct and indirect competitors to identify potential gaps in the market and opportunities for growth. The top three competitors we identified were Pinterest, Instagram, and Tattoodo.
Pros
Pinterest: Ability to find and share inspiration with friends
Instagram: Ability to view tagged photos from real customers
Tattoodo: Ability to book artists and find studios
Cons
Pinterest: No ability to contact or book artists
Instagram: No booking feature, must contact artists directly
Tattoodo: Tattoo photography and artist headshots are unprofessional
Instagram and Pinterest came up several times so it was important to integrate social sharing and a personalized artist profile into our web application. An inspiration page similar to Pinterest was important to users that don’t know what style or type of tattoo they want.
Tattoodo is a global booking platform with many of the same capabilities listed in the clients business plan. Their website is lacking professional photography and easy to use navigation. They also do not list artist licenses or customer reviews which could lead to mistrust. However, they have recently made many notable updates and could soon emerge as a strong competitor.
User Interviews
With market and competitive research underway, we then conducted 15 user interviews remotely via Zoom. Participant demographics were as follows:
Ages 25–56
Have tattoos or planning a tattoo
Females (all male participants cancelled at the last minute)
While the target audience was millennials, we identified a few edge cases of older adults who were tech savvy and finding artists on Instagram. We validated a lot of our assumptions, including users are not finding or sharing tattoos in a central location and confirmed there is a market for tattoo removals. On the contrary, we discovered many pain points we didn’t anticipate. Many users had difficulty finding artists that would work on dark skin tones or that would tattoo sensitive areas, like hands.
Key Insights and Findings
We synthesized our findings through affinity mapping and found the following key insights:
Users are not finding artists in a centralized location
Lack of pricing transparency
Lack of diversity and inclusion
The Solution
Create an inclusive tattoo marketplace to allow customers to find inspiration, artists, share designs, schedule appointments, purchase membership plans, and pay directly through the web application.
Members will receive exclusive membership perks and discounts to give artists a steady income stream and a recurring client base. Tattoo, Inc. will also offer payment plans so customers don’t have to worry about expensive, single payments.
A strong artist profile with licenses, a personal bio, and verified user reviews could help us stand out against competitors. In addition, strict image guidelines could give users the sense of trust they are seeking and convert users from Instagram and Pinterest.
Design Phase
Our team conducted a remote design studio, each focusing on sketching one key user flow.
Paper Prototypes
We then moved onto paper prototypes which helped us make decisions about the information architecture. Most importantly, it allowed us to test quickly to avoid the risk of building a product that doesn’t meet our users needs.
Wireframes
I then combined our teams prototypes into wireframes to figure out how users would perform different functions and determine tasks for usability testing.
Informal Usability Testing
We then worked as a team to create a clickable prototype in InVision for informal usability testing. Below are annotations from our usability testing.
Formal Usability Testing
We quickly iterated on feedback and moved into an interactive, mid-fidelity prototype. We conducted 5 formal, moderated usability tests with our Axure prototype. We gave users several tasks based upon our main features including finding inspiration, artists, booking appointments and tattoo removals. A few of the updates we made based upon user feedback are highlighted below:
Poor learnability for “sign in” and “register”, we increased learnability by adding a CTA button in white for “sign in”
Added headlines for clarity
Improved visual design elements by adding a logo, slogan, footer, fixing alignment, etc.
Added the capability to filter for artists specializing in removals and dark skin
“Request appointment” and “contact” caused confusion so we combined the functions
Added capability for customers to post photos in the reviews
“Healed”, “Flash”, and “Custom” filters on top right had poor readability, we changed it to a dropdown menu instead
Mid-fidelity Prototype
See if you can successfully complete the task below by clicking the link to our mid-fidelity prototype or feel free to explore!
Find a tattoo artist specializing in fine lines on dark skin and submit a tattoo request:
A selection of screens from our mid-fidelity prototype:
Style Guide
I created a style guide for our team to ensure that our prototype would maintain consistency. Since most of our users are finding art and artists from Instagram and Pinterest, it was important to create clean, minimal branding that evokes a sense of trust.
Retrospective & Next Steps
While we faced some harsh criticism initially, all of the positive and negative feedback we received led us to an end result for our client that addressed both the market and user needs.
In the end, all of our users said it successfully met or surpassed their needs and challenges. This project showed me the importance of subscription revenue models to maintain customer relationships. Especially for an industry like tattoos that wouldn’t immediately bring to mind a subscription model, this could be a great way to increase revenue and give artists a recurring customer base.
Next steps:
High-fidelity mockup and handoff annotations and specs to developers
Add artist merchandise page to include art prints, apparel, etc.
Partner with companies like Afterpay, Affirm, or Klarna for payment plans
Capitalize on the body piercing market and partner with jewelry companies for events