OpenThrough
Creating better tools for artists, collectors, and curators to discover, share, and connect through art.
Co-founder
UX/UI design
Interaction design
Visual design
Brand
Design system
iOS
Android
Desktop web
2021 - 2022
Given the ongoing closures of museums and galleries due to the pandemic, our goal was to provide artists with a platform to exhibit their work and reach new audiences. This solution revitalizes art presentation, fostering artist-gallery connection and community engagement.
While still maintaining appeal for the casual 20-40 year-old art enthusiast, we aimed to amplify our utility for the growing community of professional artists. Recognizing their unique needs, we listened to their feedback and developed a suite of tools tailored for them.
We aimed to maintain a seamless experience for art enthusiasts on the move or during downtime. We also introduced new internal prompts for artists and gallery curators. These triggers encompass any moment an artist needs to share work, news, or connect with their audience.
Beyond the core swipeable art deck, a range of enhancements were introduced: "Channels" for live exhibitions and communication, "Outings" to discover and capture nearby artworks, and a dynamic feed to connect with the community's users and artists.
As artists began creating accounts and sharing their work, we recognized the need for more dynamic methods to present, showcase, and discuss their pieces. This required a more interactive and comprehensive approach.
Our swipeable art deck was so light-weight, fun, and engaging that users would swipe through hundreds of pieces in a session. How do we prevent churn once users swipe through the entire deck of artwork?
With the success of our collaborative upload flow, we now had thousands of user generated artist pages. But what happens when the artists claim their page? How do they further engage with their newly acquired audience?
We launched a new feature called “Channels” which enables real-time exhibition and communication. Channels are audio & visual spaces for curators and artists to share, view, and talk about artwork. Initially built for artists to walk their audience through curated visuals, similar to a guided gallery tour. We also utilized this new feature for artist interviews, recording live podcasts, contest submissions, and internal user testing.
In an effort to further solve for the presentation constraints, we launched a web version of Channels as a companion to the mobile app. Not only did this create a more immersive viewing experience for users, it also removed the barrier to entry for fans of the artist that we were interviewing.
Artists could now message their followers on their social apps and direct them back to our interviews with a link. This allowed their fans to take part in the live interview without having to download the app and create an account. By doing this we were able to demonstrate value before asking users to sign up. This was a big driver in helping us grow our user base.
After launching Channels, we noticed that museums and galleries were starting to open back up. We took advantage of this by working it into our next feature which was “Outings.” Outings elevated the swipeable art deck, enabling users to view artwork on a map and visit it in person, transforming swiping into an interactive art hunt, fostering community engagement, and enhancing user involvement.
Swiping through thousands of pieces of artwork on a phone by yourself started to feel very isolating. Now that we had a more fleshed out feature set which facilitated getting out into the local community, we wanted to further strengthen those connections via the app. When a user captured pieces as part of an art outing, they would now show up on their user profile and on the galleries’ business page. This helped promote the galleries and foster connections between art patrons, galleries, and artists.
