A contest platform for photographers who haven't been discovered yet
A speculative microsite for BOOOOOOOM, an authoritative voice in contemporary arts, built around online photo contests and a grid that stays out of the work's way.
- My role
- UX/UI research and design, prototyping, microsite building
- Team
- YuFeng D, Baolati P, Yujia W, Zak Z
- Timeline
- June – August 2022
- Tools
- Figma, Webflow
- Context
- Final project, Information Design
Background
The brief was to build a speculative microsite for an already-existing website using the design practices we'd learned across the semester. Our team chose booooooom.com, which describes itself as an authoritative voice in the new contemporary arts scene, highlighting emerging talent and launching the careers of young artists internationally.
Who we designed for
We narrowed to up-and-coming photographers, the audience most likely to already be on the site, and built a persona around a new photographer looking for exposure and prompts for inspiration.
The proposal followed from that: a microsite hosting online contests where this group can submit photographs for a chance to win and be featured on a winner profile page. Contest rules combine constraints designed to keep it fair across every level of skill, so a beginner isn't just competing against a professional's equipment.
The design problem wasn't "how do we show photos". It was how do we make an unknown photographer feel like they have a real chance.
Design decisions
Black and white, minimal, Swiss
A clean and readable interface that keeps photographs highlighted at all times. Any colour in the chrome would compete with the submissions.
A rotating landing gallery
Multiple images cycling at once, so users can glance across many photographs simultaneously and click into anything that catches their eye, which is closer to how people actually browse photography than a paginated list.
Grids throughout
Spaced-out but unified. The grid does the work of making a set of unrelated images read as a single collection.
Direct inspiration: TOKYU Garden City, Masafumi Kitamaki, Guillaume Tomasi, The Covid Art Museum, Pallas, and Alicia Moore.
What I took from it
Working iteratively with a team of five meant navigating disagreement collectively rather than designing around it, and that's what produced an accessible result rather than four competing ones.
The lasting lesson was about empathising before specifying. Understanding what an undiscovered photographer actually needs came first; deciding what the experience should be came second. Doing it in that order is what made the contest mechanic obvious.