Overcome Events
Created and designed a responsive app for attending, volunteering, and creating and posting your own events.
Project Overview
Challenge
Overcome Events is a non-profit organization that has done a wide range of different types of events through the years and also helps others plan their own events,
My challenge was to design an event planning app that helps users keep their events organized.
Objective
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Design responsive event planning app that is easy to use and that allows customers to keep track of all their events, including create their own.
Scope
- Responsive App
Tools
- Figma
- FigJam
- Photo shop
- Optimal Workshop
Role
- UX Designer
- UI Designer
Team
Self directed, with feedback from my mentor and peers
Duration
- 80 hours
Let's Start with Research
EMPATHIZE
Through market research, competitive analysis, and user interviews, I set out to gain an understanding of the market for Overcome events starting with a research plan.
Research Goals
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What sources are consumers when making/planing an event?
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What problems and advantages are users running into when planning, helping with, or attending an event?
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What is the most important to users when planning an event?
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How do users normally communicate during an event?
Methodologies
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Secondary Research - Market Research and Competitive Analysis
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Primary Research - Interview Users
Market Research & Competitive Analysis
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No many options to make an event and keep track of events in an app form
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Most event making platforms are expensive
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Current platforms mainly focus on larger events
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Users like when platforms have a way to communicate with teams
Participant Interviews
Using an interview guide, I spoke with my 6 participants over zoom and in-person interviews. I also had them share some of the sources they would normally use, may that be as an attendee, volunteer, or event planner.
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4 women and 2 men
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Age range from 24 to 48
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Interview time from 20 min to 1 hr
Whose been talking?
“I want to be in the know, if there are any changes or updates...”
"Making a plan that is very easy and clear to understand would be important to my team,
attendees, and myself."
"I don't take advantage of all the tools so I don’t get overwhelmed. I just use the tools I need to learn."
Clarifying User Goals & Needs
Grouping similar insights by using empathy mapping, I synthesized common categories users shared.
Focusing on their Goals, needs, Pains, and motivations, I narrowed down to the three-to-four most common insights and corresponding needs for Overcome Events target user group.
Goals
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6/6 participants want to be able to keep track of their schedule
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6/6 Participants want to be able to communicate with team member and other attendees
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5/6 Participants want be updated and in the loop of any updates or changes
Motivations
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6/6 participants are motivated by keeping track of their own personal schedule
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6/6 Participants are motivated to stay organized
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6/6 Participants enjoy having a good alert feature to stay informed
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3/6 participants like some colorant and a modern look
Needs
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6/6 participants need a map or some sort of layout of the event
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5/6 Participants want/need to have an easy and simple layout and navigations
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5/6 Participants need some sort of guidebook or help feature
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4/6 Participants need the ability to build and edit their own schedule within the app
Pains
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6/6 participants feel frustrated when not being updated and informed of changes
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5/6 Participants find navigations are hard to understand and not user friendly
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2/6 Participants are annoyed when the system is buggy and freezes in the middle of a task
Introducing Our Peronas
With all the information gathered so far, I was able to create Overcome Events target customer personas: Bruce, our event planner, and Robin, our volunteer.
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Bruce has been a professional event planner for over 11 years. He has struggled to find one platform that can do it all from planning events and keeping things organized to staying connected with his team, while also staying cost efficient.
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Robin is a volunteer for Bruce's upcoming event. Robin loves volunteering for events in her community, although she does struggle to stay in the loop. Her issues range from not knowing where she needs to be to missing updates and not being able to communicate with her lead.
Empathy Map
I created an empathy map made from all the observations and statements that were given during the user interviews. The below findings show what Bruce and Robin will need to help make their event a successful one.
Storyboard
I drew out a storyboard to give my client a visual understanding of what struggles they are having, how they would come across the Overcome Events platform, and how it would help them.
DEFINE
Time to Strategize the Project
Using the Venn diagram put me in the shoes of the company, consumer, and IT. I determined the best way to categorize the vital information that would contribute to the best experience for Bruce and Robin.
Site Map
Focusing on simple navigation was important so that I could prioritize solutions. I found that key navigation features for Bruce and Robin are - finding events, signing up to volunteer/attend an event, creating an event, and messaging other participants.
IDEATE
Mapping out Personas' Experience
Because there are two types of users in this case, there is a task/user flow for Bruce and for Robin. Bruce is mainly focusing on creating his event and adding his team. Robin is focusing on receiving tasks and messages from her lead.
Task/User Flow
Low-Fid and Responsive Wireframing
Having an idea of how Bruce and Robin will navigate, I sketched a simple layout on a couple pages that will be needed to make an event function.
Scroll Left & Right for a "Before & After View" below.
Simple & Approachable UI Design
DESIGN
In order to test the usability of the design, I created a prototype for my soon-to-be testing participants.
Mid to High Fidelity Testing
Focusing on how the team can communicate with each other and knowing their task, as well as, creating an event and how to invite team members to the team.
Scroll Left & Right for a "Before & After View" below.
Comparison of Mid-Fidelity to High-fidelity
Comparison of Sketch to low-fidelity
The Results are in!
Usability Testing
Using the high fidelity and testing my design on users to measure its usability and identify any areas of improvement
Overview
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Participants: 8
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Age: 24-48
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Time per Interview: 25 min-1 hr
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Method: 1-on-1 remote or in-person
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Tasks Completion: 100%
Affinity Map
I was able to group all the information from testing using an affinity map. I was able to draw connections to uncover patterns that participants said and did that helped me identify design recommendations to improve the usability of my design.
Test findings
Although most of the participants did not have many pain points when using Overcome Events, there were some suggestions that they felt would make their experience even better.
Findings results.
Motivations
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8/8 participants found the app easy to use
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8/8 participants liked the design and color choice
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5/8 participants really enjoyed having a filter and category option
Recommendations
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6/8 participants would like to have two separate buttons for back and complete
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6/8 participants would like to have save button follow on create an event page
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6/8 participants would like a due date with tasks
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6/8 participants would like to have task and message option in team also as its own feature in create an event
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5/8 participants would like to be able to customize the order features are added when creating an event
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5/8 participants would prefer to have dark mode option
Final Thoughts
With this project helped me learn the how to work with a client and finding out their needs and wants and how much my clients wanted to stay in the loop of my processes. If I were to push this project further here are the next steps I would take:
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Re-test the changes - Though I made some design changes based on my insights gained from the affinity map, I would want to validate that these improvements are indeed improvements to the overall design.
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AR Features - Because of this project was made during Figma beta testing a lot of special animation features were not working, I would like to expand more of those features and its usability.
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Add more tools - would like to show other tools in event planning page, like map, training, rules/guidelines and how users can use those when creating an event.