Personas

Considering my understanding of RedBubble's current and targeted audience, I have developed three different personas to represent the website's user base.

(It should be noted that all information here is fictional and any similarity to real people is coincidental. The images used have been sourced from various websites and I do not hold any copyrights over them.)

Heidi Miller, Artist

Heidi is a 26 year old artist from Melbourne, Australia. She lives in Coburg with her long time boyfriend, their 2 cats - Molly and Nemo - and Harry the goldfish.

Heidi studied graphic design at Bendigo TAFE before transferring to RMIT and moving to the city. After graduating, Heidi has worked in varying part time jobs, mainly hospitality, until finding her current job in a local art gallery in Brunswick.

Heidi is a social person who likes to meet new people. Working at the gallery allows her to meet artists and art critics and she has been building up a useful network of industry contacts. As a budding painter, Heidi has had her work in a few small, local exhibitions and has even sold a few pieces of art here and there.

Heidi discovered RedBubble through friends. She decided to try selling her work on RedBubble as prints and started to experiment with other media to design graphics for t-shirts and other products sold through the site. Heidi's artwork has been featured on the RedBubble home page and she now averages 4 sales a fortnight. Heidi would like to become a full time, self sufficient artist one day. She is happy to exhibit when she gets the chance and keeps her RedBubble profile as a means of promoting her as a serious artist. Being able to sell her work online without having to actually print the items or manage payments and shipping allows Heidi to easily add art to her RedBubble portfolio and she has built up a strong catalogue of work over the 2 years she has been using it.

Evan Thomson, Student

Evan Thomson is a 17 year old student, completing year 12 at Sydney Boys High School in Surry Hills, NSW. Evan lives with his parents and younger brother at their home in Randwick and catches the bus to school every day. Evan's

parents both work full time, and own their home (under mortgage). Evan's parents have always encouraged their sons to work hard an

d do not spoil them with over the top gifts or spending money, yet they also encourage creative expression and support their children in all endeavours.

Evan first discovered RedBubble when searching online for a t-shirt printing service. Evan wanted to create typographic t-shirts that would separate him from the crowd, statements about life and popularity etc. Designing t-shirts is a hobby and will most likely remain that way. Evan aspires to be a film producer and to that end has done some work experience in a local film production company. Evan plans to take a gap year to travel overseas after finishing school at the end of this year, but does not intend to move away from his family in Australia just yet.

Helen Morrison, Office Manager

Helen Morrison is a single mother, divorced, in her late 40's living in Austin, Texas. Helen lives with her teenage daughter in their family home, which she took over in the divorce settlement 7 years ago. Helen has a boyfriend of 2 years - Ken Rogers, mid-50's - who is a Business Manager at an air conditioner manufacturing company. Helen works as an Office Manager in a local insurance brokerage, in the same job she has been in for over 12 years - the job she got after her daughter, Sarah, was old enough to go into day care. Helen is happy in her job, she has a good salary, commands respect and has excellent rapport with her co-workers and manager. Helen feels respected and valued as an employee and returns that respect by continually improving work flow and procedures. She keeps up to date with the latest technologies and undertakes external training when she has the opportunity.

Helen started using RedBubble after her daughter asked her for a specific t-shirt from the site for her birthday in 2010 (it was a Twilight inspired 'Edward' design). Although Helen was familiar with internet banking, she has never before used a website to purchase an actual 'thing'. Although she was a bit apprehensive at first, the transaction was successful and Helen now uses RedBubble as one of several online marketplaces to source gifts for birthday and christmas presents.

Construction Technologies

Dynamic vs Static content

The RedBubble website contains primarily dynamic content, managed by a Content Management System (CMS). The home page has a transitioning image from a set that changes regularly - based on varying themes, focussing on specific styles of artwork or featured artists.

There are numerous blogs and articles being updated on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Collections of 'featured' artists and work based around different themes are changing on a regular basis.

The search options start within different base categories (t-shirts or artwork), flowing into subsequent categories based around defined 'tags' for each piece of work. The CMS can serve up narrowly defined search results, eg: t-shirts + for girls + funny + humour + cool + red = 2 results on date of posting.

The amount of work that gets uploaded every day means the CMS needs to be able to cope with large volumes of work. The ability for each user to update the artwork files and details for their account also requires the CMS to be able to keep up with overwriting existing information, as well as uploading new details.

Programming Languages

The site is based on XHTML with programming languages such as Ruby on Rails used to extend the basic functionality. The job description for potential programmers to work (http://www.redbubble.com/jobs) specifies Ruby on Rails, Java and C# as key languages used. The ad also specifies RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) and NoSQL (Not Only SQL) as database solutions.

Ruby on Rails is an open source programming framework, and is the basis for other dynamic websites/applications such as Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/), Backpack (http://www.backpackit.com/), JustinTV (http://www.justin.tv/), Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/) and Writeboard (http://www.writeboard.com/).

The transitioning images on the home page seem to be done using Java and CSS, making it accessible for people that don't have the Flash plugin. The Fancy Uploader for users adding work is created with Flash, but there is an alternative "old school uploader" available for those without the Flash plugin, which uses XHTML instead.

The Design of a New Environment

The use of Communication Design/Graphic Design on Redbubble.com

At first glance it might seem that the RedBubble website suffers from a lack of graphic design & design elements. There doesn't appear to be a lot of thought put into the design of the site - it may even seem unfinished to some. There is a noticeable lack of fancy rounded buttons, gradients and shadows, there is a lot of white space and straightforward styling of navigation and links.

In actual fact, it becomes obvious that the design of the site has been engineered to focus on the artwork of its members. I am reminded of the advice one of my TAFE lecturers gave me for preparing my design portfolio - the folio must not be better (designed) than the work it contains. In other words, the content should be the focus - not the vehicle of delivery. By maintaining a minimalist, restrained design, RedBubble is keeping the focus on the artwork of its members. As I mentioned in my previous post, it is obvious that the site values its members and the contribution they make towards creating a successful community/marketplace.

Expression of Identity

The Redbubble identity is composed of a mix of design elements, graphics, colours and type styles. The standard RedBubble logo is a sans serif modern font, in medium weight, all lowercase and using the colour contrast to highlight the two separate words that make up the website name.

The RedBubble logo also appears in other formats - there is a 3D logo used as the avatar for the site's own account, as well as different logo designs/interpretations used for promotional artwork & t-shirts.

Keeping to it's namesake, the site uses a primarily red & grey based colour palette, with blue and red highlights for links, in a straightforward style and down to earth style. By keeping the navigation as plain text links, the pages have plenty of clear space and help to keep the focus on the artwork or articles on each page.

Searching for a specific type of product is easy with clearly defined categories based on the 'tags' artists apply to their work on upload. The plain text links show clear the hierarchy of sections and allow the user to narrow down the criteria to find exactly what they are looking for - or to simply browse the numerous categories of artwork and see what's out there.

Geek >

Geek > Star Wars

The About Us page makes use of quirky imagery and bold type headings that reference hand-crafted collage/cut & paste graphics. A red text box with bubble watermarks to highlight dynamic/changing text. Small speech bubble icons next to the links are cute symbols indicating the type of article that the links lead to (blog). The quirky & fun graphics & type carry through to articles about the team, with the imagery and text informal and friendly, even 'taking the piss' out of themselves.

The site also uses illustrations as a way of providing information. Realistic style illustrations throughout the site represent types of artwork as well as the different styles of t-shirts and products available. The standardised "models" wearing the t-shirts are also a way to put the focus onto the actual artwork, keeping visual distractions to a minimum.

Communicating with members

The language used throughout the site has been "designed" to portray the personality of the team behind the business. Down to earth, straightforward, and friendly text clearly instructs the user how to go about signing up, uploading artwork and buying products. There are numerous pages and articles detailing the RedBubble objectives, the team behind the site as well as opinion pieces written by staff for the benefit of the community. Every article in the blog has commenting enabled so community members (users) can give feedback. This shows a desire for openness and a respect for members by the RedBubble team. Regular blog articles (such as the Weekly Wrap) and 'Featured' items give frequent praise to the members - fostering a friendly relationship between users and the RedBubble personality, eg:

"With the risk of sounding like a broken record, we’ll say it again. You’re really are an impressive bunch! We love compiling the wrap each week but it often takes longer than planned as we’re easily distracted by the great things we find in your journals."

and:

"We’re a spot for positive encouragement and feedback, somewhere to display work, admire work and talk about work. We’re into discussion, learning and collaboration and getting lots of people smiling."

There is even an inspirational piece of artwork available for purchase that sums up the values and goals of the site:

Design contributing to the user experience

All the design elements, graphics, colours and language have been specifically used to position RedBubble as a no-fuss, straightforward, accessible and functional service. Although it can be argued that visual design is primarily used to make sites look 'pretty' or 'appealing' there is no doubt in my mind that the visual design has a huge impact on the actual experience a user has on the site. By maintaining a clean, easily navigatable layout, the user can quickly find what they are looking for without any hassles - whether it be instructions on how to upload work or to buy a cartoon style t-shirt featuring Super Mario or the Ghostbusters. Plus, the more pleasant the initial experience is, the more likely users are going to return to the site later on!