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Side ProjectSide Project - MVP shipped

ART Index - a trust layer for buying Ukrainian contemporary art online

Side Project · art-index.gallery

A curated marketplace where trust is the product - vetted artists, transparent pricing, an ART Index score, and full provenance. Conceived and shipped solo as an MVP.

Visit ART Index ↗
Role
Co-Founder / Product Owner
Domain
Marketplace · Two-sided platform
Timeframe
2026 — Present
Team
Solo (product, requirements, AI-assisted build)
Tools
Figma, Next.js, AI build tools, analytics

Context

Buying emerging contemporary art online is high-friction and low-trust: unclear pricing, no provenance, and no objective way to compare works. Collectors hesitate, emerging Ukrainian artists struggle to reach a global audience.

My contribution

  • Defined the product vision and the two-sided value proposition (collectors ↔ artists).
  • Wrote personas — the Collector (wants trust + story) and the Artist (wants reach) — and scoped the MVP.
  • Designed the 'ART Index' scoring concept as a comparability signal, and wrote user stories and acceptance criteria for the core browse → trust → enquire flow.
  • Defined success metrics before building (acquisition → trust → enquiry).

Approach

  1. 1Discovery — problem framing, personas and the product bet.
  2. 2Scope — MVP vs out-of-scope (cut auctions, accounts and payments from v1).
  3. 3Build — catalog, artwork detail with score + provenance, artist profiles and a framing studio (AI-assisted).
  4. 4Measure — acquisition, engagement, trust → intent and supply-side metrics.

Artifacts

The business-analysis evidence behind the work.

Persona cards for the Collector and the Artist on ART Index.
Persona cards — Collector & Artist.
User story map for the core browse, trust and enquire funnel.
User story map — the core funnel.
Metric tree from acquisition through trust to enquiry.
Metric tree — acquisition → trust → enquiry.

See it live

Real screens from the shipped product.

Visit ART Index ↗
ART Index home page — a dark, gallery-style hero reading 'Discover Ukrainian Contemporary Art'.
Home — a dark, gallery-style hero frames the collection.
ART Index artwork detail page for 'Trace XIII' showing transparent pricing and the ART Index trust score.
Artwork detail — transparent pricing and the ART Index trust score.
ART Index catalog with filters for artist, style, technique, size and price, and a grid of scored artworks.
Catalog — filter by artist, style, technique, size and price.
ART Index 'How it works' page explaining the transparency methodology for buyers and artists.
How it works — the transparency methodology.

Results & metrics

Live
two-sided marketplace shipped
EN / UA
localized MVP
1 bet
make a single artwork trustworthy enough to enquire

Business value

Demonstrates end-to-end product ownership: spotting a trust gap in a real market, framing it as a product bet, scoping a focused MVP, and shipping a live, polished two-sided marketplace — exactly the muscle a Product Owner uses on a feature or product area.

What I’d do next / learnings

Building it solo forced ruthless MVP prioritization — I cut auctions, accounts and payments from v1 to ship the one thing that mattered: making a single artwork feel trustworthy enough to enquire about.

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