UI and UX design for a design document marketplace. The client asked for an intuitive browser-based marketplace using architectural graphic language.
Interface: Web Browser
Type: Marketplace/Social Media
Scope: UI, UX, Branding
Client: Patrick Wallain, CEO
I wanted to identify which aspects of marketplace app user experience are liked and disliked. To this end, I set these research goals:
- Identify best practices for organizing information.
- Identify an intuitive user experience for designers.
- Understand pain points that could make searching difficult.
- Identify a UI that will help promote a sense of community.
- Find a color scheme and UI aesthetics that is best for the user base.
Although The Tracery is unique in its exchange of professional design documents (plans, for example), I wanted to gain an understanding of services that already address architects, interior designers, and landscape architects as users.
ANALYSIS RESULTS
1. The Tracery should be simple and clean while presenting a unique visual identity. The Tracery should exist mostly on one singular space.
2. Community interaction and visibility should be organized via a map.
3. A “likes” system should be used to promote the best contributors, aiding the growth of the site’s community.
Through the research analysis and client needs, I developed a user experience that places emphasis on the Marketplace, making it feel like a central hub.
By doing so, this means creating fewer pages that divert from the Marketplace and using layered windows that blur, like layering architectural trace paper, to keep user experience within the Marketplace.
Community building and visibility should be organized on a map system, in which profiles and drawing sets can be identified by their location of design.
Standard architectural graphic language is overly emphasized so that it becomes uncanny: Helvetic Neue and its variations as the only type font used, a basic grid overlay to structure all windows and align text, and blurring pop-up windows to provide visual hierarchy.
The client requested design for business cards and letterheads which take on the aforementioned graphic principles. The top layer text of the cards are cut to reveal its green paper core.