Artaku Vol.03
This is our documentation of creating the service. We are going to cover “Landing Page”, “User Test”, “User Feedback” “Result” and “Next Step”. (01/Jan/2021–26/Mar/2021)
You can read about our overall idea in Vol.2.
Landing Page
You can check our concept video and landing page for artists and art lovers here.
User Test
We tested several touchpoints such as selecting artworks, the unboxing, and the home gallery experience. (It was free service because it was part of the school project.)
Selecting artworks
We created an Instagram account to show artworks to users. You can see our Instagram below.
https://www.instagram.com/artaku.art/
Unboxing
We created our Artaku box, wrapping, the personalized letter with a description of artworks and photo of artists to create a personal experience and deliver local artist’s story rather than just delivering artworks.
Home gallery
The person who had rented artworks from us hosted other art lovers and we tested the home gallery experience.
They met for the first time but art was a really good conversation starter and opened dialogue beyond art topics so that people were able to discover each other through the home gallery very naturally.
We planned this session for 1 hour but they enjoyed the conversation for 3 hours which is amazing. The topic was not just about art but also about life, society, social media, religion, and culture even they met for the first time.
Safety design
We did a search experiment with women to understand how they make sure that it’s safe when traveling alone and stay in Airbnb or Couchsurfing. She told us that she always checks certain words like “safe” in the review on the Airbnb platform. This review search function would be definitely applicable to the home gallery.
User Feedback
We had quite good feedback from our user test. Two users posted the experience on Instagram and another person actually bought a painting after renting.
We conducted a Product Market Fit Survey to understand whether our service is serving people’s needs or not. It’s only 7 people but we got more than 40% of “Very Disappointed” if they could no longer use Artaku which is usually its threshold of product-market fit.
Both artists and art lovers really liked our service.
Launching in New York City
We came to NYC to test the needs of our service because the US is the biggest market and NYC is accounts for 90% of the US art market.
Result
We did sales in 38 places such as in front of the museum, art gallery, furniture shop, and sent around 300 DM on Instagram and Linkedin in 2 weeks. Then, we got only 1 user who lives 1 hour away from NYC.
We had a chance also to talk with the CEO of Artify.it who tried the art rental business but shut down it 7 years ago. They had the same problem with us that individuals don’t rent art.
We also conclude that there is no need of having art at home for individuals. We are a startup and it’s the most important thing to solve customer’s burning needs to grow but we didn’t solve any problems, therefore we were struggling to find users.
We wanted to integrate art into everyday life like fashion but we see that there is no burning need to have art at home so we decided not to continue this idea.
Thank you to our first user, Nicole Bergman. We really appreciate Akinori Towma, Menace who trust us and provided artworks. And everyone who cooperated with us and supported our idea.
Next Step
The biggest learning was that people don’t pay for the nice-to-have services or products. It should solve people’s burning needs. Otherwise, people just say it’s a cool idea but never pay for your service. We will keep on finding burning needs and test quickly!
