Night Web

Role

Concept work

UX design

UI design

Testing

Prototyping

Client

In-House Project

Year

2023

Giving the spotlight

In 2022 Samsung presented a new Galaxy S22 smartphone with an incredible camera and a special Nightography feature that helps users take and create stunning photos in low light conditions. To celebrate that launch, Samsung commissioned a website with a digital campaign to engage artists and creators. By giving them the spotlight on a digital stage, users (artists) could participate in an incredible showcase of talents and potentially win a prize.

A few about the phone

The whole point of the digital activation was to present this new phone with a bunch of cool features to the targeted audience of creatives who would utilize these features to produce incredible art. Key features were the S-Pen (that could be used for illustration, drawing, designing, etc.), camera and Nightography (for photography and videography), and performance (to support demanding software for editing, 3D, etc.).

Brainstorming the incentives for engagement

hire a well-known talented artist to produce a digital art piece to be the leitmotif of the whole project

initiate user activation with an enticing contest that requires participants to share their work on social media so they can collect votes

present the tool that can help participants create incredible art in the future (the new phone)

offer valuable prizes such as a year-long MasterClass subscription

create merch with submitted art that got the most points

Already established wireframes

Since Samsung regularly requires a creative approach to customer acquisition, the focus is always more on producing a strong concept and less on reinventing the wheel with wireframes. The skeleton for this kind of project was already proven to work on multiple different campaigns and the emphasis is therefore always more on the UI than UX.

I think filtering the submissions is a must so the page doesn’t get spammed.

Concept testing with user interviews

Engaging campaigns like this, where the client gives you free rein to design and ideate, can sometimes turn sour if you don’t test your wild idea with potential users or clients. That’s why this concept was tested by conducting user interviews, but also to gather more suggestions on how to make this experience run smoothly for the users and the client. The targeted audience was artists of all demographics and art mediums, and one of the brilliant ideas born from the interviews was to filter (and potentially reject) the submitted work so the gallery page doesn’t get buried with irrelevant content.

The look

Once the concept and the tweaking of the wireframe were finalized, it was necessary to present it by encompassing the artwork, promotional video, promotional phone content, and prizes into a cohesive design. To reflect the Nightography feature and the amazing illustration, the page is mostly dark and the details of the illustration were used as design elements. The light part of the page gives emphasis to the phone presentation, which is the whole point of the project.

Launch, stunning submitted art and voting process

The website launched accompanied by a video ad (YouTube) and a social media campaign (Facebook and Instagram). Users were invited to upload their night-inspired art and share it on social media with the goal of collecting points from voting. After two weeks, the contest ended and submissions with the most votes were eligible to win one of many prizes. Featured below is some of the incredible art that was uploaded to the gallery.

The conclusion

At the end of the contest, winners were awarded prizes of different values depending on the voting score. The main prize was a year-long subscription to a highly rated skill learning site, MasterClass, while other prizes included merch such as hoodies, drawing notebooks, and posters.

On the design side of the project, the valuable lesson was how important it is to have a solid concept and execution (not only design-wise but also logistics-wise). The whole project was widely successful, with 7.7% of site visitors applying for the contest and bringing in even more visitors (family and friends) to vote for them.

NIGHT web