L'Atelier is one of Africa’s most prestigious art competitions, rewarding young visual artists with the opportunity to develop their talents abroad. The website not only serves as a showcase for previous years’ art, but also provides information and tools to artists that would like to participate in the competition.
The L’Atelier website needed to adapt to the changing landscape of technology and user behaviors. Our task was to re-design the website to enhance the overall user experience and increase competition registration and entries for 2018 from previous years.
What we uncovered
Research was conducted to gather detailed requirements from the client and the website audience. This uncovered a much larger business problem where there were multiple entry and logistical barriers centered around the competition.
The primary function of the website fundamentally had to change. This was no longer just a website redesign but a redesign of L’Ateliers’ ecosystem of operations.
The solution
The operational problem was to be tackled through service design. In order to increase not just registrations but actual artwork submissions we had improve the experiences of the artists, the adjudicators, and the business by designing the organisation's operations to better support the multiple users within the competition ecosystem.
We created a new user journey that removed the physical and manual processes and included them into the build of the platform. The platform allowed for multiple user roles, for the registration and submission of artwork as well as the adjudication process.
Improving the artist experience
Artist were now able to register online, as well as submit their artworks for the initial adjudication. During this process the artist uploads images and information regarding their artwork that drastically cut down time and money compared to previous competitions. Only the artists whose entries make it through to the next round are contact directly to arrange for the collection of their artwork.
Streamlining adjudication
The adjudicators were given login’s, which enabled them to all view artwork submissions online without having to travel to a physical location. The judging portal allowed the adjudicators to go through the artworks in their own time, select the best artworks for next round and the system would automatically tally up the numbers.
Project impact
In the spirit of creativity and art, an ecosystem of digital products was delivered to encapsulate African artists’ talent, provide users with information about the competition, improve entry requirements and logistical processes. We put the user needs at the center of the experience and in turn brought the artists and the business closer together.
This solution not only increased the total number of registrations, but the total number of artworks submitted. However the critical part of this project was the cut in logistical time and costs for the artists and the business.
59%
Increase in total number of artworks submitted
1161
New registrations on the platform
55%
Increase in the number of top artworks recieved
63.50%
Increase in mobile usage across Africa
5x
User experience and platform related awards recieved
