Case Study: Artnet Price Database
Introduction and Interviews
Artnet started in 1989 with a tool that would forever change the secondary market in fine art. The Artnet Price Database brought transparency to an otherwise occluded world of fine art price comparison. Dealers could just make up whatever sort of prices they wished before that.
Over the years, the tool received a facelift here and there, and there were a few redesign attempts, but it had kept its fundamental design all the way through to the end of the 2020s.
The old Price Database from the early 90s and the last iteration of the tool before the redesign
I came aboard as Senior Designer in March of 2022. My very first task was to begin the redesign of this historic tool.
After getting a few tours of the PDB (as it's called internally), I met with auction specialists and other stakeholders from business, engineering, and data science to find out what the pain points were as well as discovering what sorts of capabilities we had to work with.
Internal and Competitive Research and Design
I began exploration by seeing what work had already been done in the past, looking at what competitors were doing, as well as taking a dive into our existing design system. As it turned out, the design system hadn't really been set up for this sort of tool— it was mainly there for basic pages with text and there was a lot that needed to be moved around for the PDB. Additionally, I poured myself into learning as much as I could about the fine art auction world as I could.
A previous redeisgn effort and the chopped up version of the old PDB
After that, I took screenshots of the existing tool, chopped it up, and 'asked questions' of each part and its respective functionality. That led to the initial idea for the new filtering paradigm as well as other fun ideas.
I presented the new filtering method to senior stakeholders, took their feedback, and met with engineering and data to refine the idea.
The initial filtering idea
In just over two weeks I had a click-through prototype ready to present to a very large team as well as the CEO. Everyone was thrilled with the new design. I immediately put the feedback into consideration and moved on to the mobile breakpoint.
Initial mobile screens for envisioning
At that point, we were ready to begin envisioning the designs to get them ready for dev to take on. The design system still wasn't quite there, so I began to componentize the designs— creating reusable components where it made sense. After that point, I was in constant contact with the engineering team, being available to answer their questions as the arose while I was working on edge cases and additional sections and aspects of the tool.
The whole team was hustling to get everything together.
The Steady March to Launch
From there, I continued to work on refining the filtering, results views, list creation, and components for the dev team. At that point I was splitting my time between refining the PDB and working on other projects.
It was six months from the start of the project to beta launch and then another six months to full launch. Everyone was excited and proud of the work we had done.
Landing page for the new Artnet Price Database
Tutorial I created for the product launch of the new Artnet Price Database
Setting the Future Team Up For Success
Before I left Artnet, I made sure to document all my designs. In addition to mentoring a junior designer into the role of designer and explaining my designs along the way, I created video walkthroughs for the next design lead to have a solid starting point to work from.
Success and Acclaim for the New PDB
Getting to redesign the Artnet Price Database was a huge honor and privilege. In addition to all the product design work, I also created videos, one of which played at the Artnet booth at Art Cologne. The new Price Database was celebrated within Artnet as well as in the fine art industry. It is definitely a highlight of my career as a product designer and I'm excited for the next adventure. 🎉
