This case study is to explore product opportunities for a social networking application for designers and artists.
Problem Statement: Designers and artists need a space to network as a creative global community. They are facing below problems:
Lack of fruitful networking and connection
Overshadowed by the popular artists’ engagement
Scattered accounts and channels
Solution: Arters create a social networking application only for artists and designers so that they can collaborate on ideas and projects. The motto will be “fast & friendly networking space for artists and designers”. The application will have features by going through a data-driven approach and prototype testing to understand market opportunities.
First, I explored creative industry in a specific country by taking Thailand as an example. Resources show that art and design graduates are not encouraged to choose this career after education and they even shift to work in the other field.
Currently, social media such as Facebook and Instagram is used as a place to showcase their talents. However, among a large number of users, networking within the artist and designer community become a needle in haystack.
I and two other team members come up with a minimum viable product (MVP) as a prototype. Fundamental features are designed and let users test them. In this way, we can interview their insights, experience and ideas. Iterative methods can improve customer experience and expand product opportunities.
Target Customer : two groups of customers will be focused.
Art and Design Students (17–24 years old)
Experienced Artists and Designers (25–45 years old)
Competitor Analysis: We explored other market players, including LinkedIn, Behance, etc. They have existed in the market for 10–20 years: from the number of 600 Million active users in IG to 1 Million active users in Behance.
Though we have put up competitors chart here, Arter’s positioning in the market will be unique as a less formal one. It will focus on fast networking opportunity instead of showcasing artwork as in Behance, having multiple professional industries as in LinkedIn or multiple purposes as in Facebook or Instagram.
After volunteer artists and designers tested the Arter app prototype version, they felt like Arter is a long lost friend app for them. The most favorite feature for them is Event Discovery because it could broaden their vision and inspire them when meeting people with the same interests. And the matching feature would make them feel closer to each other.
According to hierarchy of effectiveness, the product is at the bottom of the stage. As the product is to connect artists and designers, resources should be spent more on online marketing and branding. To measure the effectiveness of spending in marketing, metrics will be set. The metrics aim to drive our consumer to the upper level.
As social network industry is already competitive enough, branding and digital marketing requires to be highlighted. Therefore, cost will include ads, sponsors for events and public relations. Revenue streams can come in different combination sets of model, including a freemium model, paid in-app package, etc.
Conclusion: This product discovery allows me to explore social network application how it works and builds a revenue model. I will continue to explore with emerging technology such as AR/VR or NFT space as it will be an interesting creator and maker space for the artists.
This work has been put together for a class I enrolled in School of Design and Architecture of KMUTT Bangkok. I and my team spent 30+ hours to pull this pitch deck and it takes only one second to applaud this article. So, please feel free to click the clap button below.
I believe there is always room to improve. If you have any feedbacks or questions, drop by a message at my LinkedIn.
