Case study2025BoliviaArt & Culture
When the most vulnerable actor in a transaction is also the one who creates the value, design has to take a side. QURI was that exercise.
Available platforms were international - designed for markets with payment infrastructure, logistics, and price expectations radically different from those of a Bolivian artist. Selling on them meant accepting opaque commissions, payment methods without local options, and a cultural interface designed for a different buyer.
QURI started from a different premise: build for the Bolivian context from the beginning, without adapting a foreign model.
Not with a structured interview guide, but with a disposition to observe. Open conversations with two artists, visits to their workspaces, and direct observation of a group of four more creators.
This light ethnographic approach wasn't meant to be statistically representative. Its value was in exposing the team to the economic reality of the artist before a single screen was designed.
Without their own channel, their work was invisible beyond word of mouth and generic social media.
Available platforms were foreign, with support logics that didn't account for the Bolivian context.
They had no clarity or real negotiating power over commissions or sales conditions.
Shipping costs, currency, and price expectations from other platforms created friction before even publishing.
"I have nowhere to show what I do without it looking like any other post."
- artist · studio visit
QURI's business model started from a clear premise: protect the income of creators in a vulnerable position. Translating that premise into interface decisions was the core of the work.
I designed a structure where the artist always sees how the platform's commissions translate directly into greater exposure and distribution of their work - not as an abstract cost, but as a visible and reasoned exchange. Net income was calculable before publishing.
Fixed commissions were public and visible before publishing any work. Percentage commissions - tied to the sale type or auction - were shown at the moment of configuring the listing, always respecting the minimum margin proposed by the artist. If there was renegotiation over the value of a piece, the process was explicit.
The artist's profile functioned as a self-sufficient portfolio: identity verification, sales history, process documents, and a gallery the artist could complete their own way - their process, their environment, their tools. Not a generic template: a space the artist could shape to tell their story.
The architecture was built from scratch prioritizing two journeys: the artist publishing their work and the buyer discovering and acquiring a piece. Both had to end without surprises.
The Figma file contains hi-fi prototypes. The spaces below will be replaced with the exported screenshots.
The project remains in hi-fi prototype phase in Figma. It was paused before moving to development due to lack of investment, not lack of design clarity.
The information architecture, user flows, and main screens are complete. What's missing is validation with more artists and the first production iteration.
When the constraint is ethical - not just business - there are interface decisions that can't be justified with conversion metrics. That's not a cost: it's what makes a product honest with the people who use it.
Six artists observed directly were sufficient to identify patterns that no foreign benchmark would have revealed. The number isn't what validates the research.
The artwork publishing flow with at least three real artists, before investing in the buyer catalog. The artist is the most critical actor in the system.