Keeping your days lively, one event at a time
End-to-end Application
Role: End-to-end product designer
and UX researcher
Timeline: August 2024 - September 2024
Background & Problem
Many people, like myself, find out about events through Instagram, which has evolved into a powerful tool for businesses to promote products and services to a wide audience, even becoming a venue for promoting and hosting events. However, despite its popularity, Instagram may not be the ideal choice for all event-related functions. With its limited interaction and information, users can find it hard to gauge interest in attending events.
Research
To address this gap, I wanted to explore how integrating an event-finding application with social media platforms can enhance user engagement, facilitate personalized event discovery, and support local event organizers, ultimately creating a community around shared interests and experiences.
Objectives
Discover how users go about finding events around the city
Determine what makes a user attend the event
Analyze what current obstacles users experience in finding or attending events.
Understand how the app would fit into user’s lifestyle
Research Method
User interviews
I interviewed 5 participants who enjoy attending local events either frequently or occasionally. These discussions allowed me to find common challenges, such as difficulties in filtering relevant events or finding necessary information to plan accordingly, but also revealed deeper insights into what participants valued in an event-finding app - personalization.
Competitive Analysis
There are currently a variety of event finding apps out there. I compared three competitors, Eventbrite, Allevents, and Fever, to gauge what current event finding apps do well or lack in with user experience. Through my research with each platform, I found that Eventbrite seems more popular and hosts bigger events in the city. Allevents caters towards much more niche events, however it can feel rather questionable from an outsider if the event is legitimate or not. Fever feels much more modernized and reliable with finding events in the city and buying tickets.
Key Insights 💡
Social media presence is important but I haven’t seen an event finding platform with social media integration.
Instagram has evolved into a powerful tool for businesses to promote their products and services to a wide audience, even becoming a venue for promoting and hosting events.
No sense of community
Current platforms lack the aspect of connecting with others. Increasing community engagement can help encourage participation in local activities, enhancing social interaction, and strengthen community ties.
Define
How can we incorporate social media platforms like Instagram into an event-finding app to help users discover events and receive personalized recommendations based on their current followings and interests?
How might we utilize social media and/or a community forum to facilitate community building and increase engagement?
User Personas
Key Features
After defining user needs and expectations, I narrowed it down to 3 key features I wanted to focus:
Comprehensive onboarding process
Users signing up can link their social media account and answer a questionnaire that’ll help recommend events to them
Informative & interactive events page
A detailed events page where users can find all the information they need, and interact with others in the community
Community feed
A way for small businesses and organizers to post updates or behind-the-scenes to hype up their audience, and for users to connect with others
User Flows
Onboarding - During this process, users will have the option to link their social media accounts and choose which accounts to follow that also use Lively. After this step, users will fill out a questionnaire asking what type of local events they’re interested in.
RSVP - Users who want to attend an event can either RSVP for free events or buy tickets for paid events.
Post a picture - In the community page, users can post pictures of their time at the event. Pictures can only be posted if the event is tagged
Design
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes were created in Figma. This was where I tested the feasibility of each flow based on the user flows I created. I made adjustments to the order of onboarding, created an elaborate flow for users to buy tickets, and experimented how a community forum could work within the app.
Afterwards, I conducted a lo-fi usability test to receive feedback on my user flows and designs. While there wasn’t much of a problem with the onboarding and RSVP flows, participants had mixed reviews about posting a picture to the community feed. Users thought that having a community space would be a great feature to have, but having both community groups and a gallery might be too ambitious for the scope of this app. Thus, I made adjustments to the community feed where groups weren’t involved but photos can still be posted to keep engagement.
Style Guide
I opted for a vibrant yellow and orange to embody the cheerful and “lively” energy that captures the emotions commonly associated with attending events. I added blue for my secondary color as an accent.
High Fidelity Wireframes
Lively’s high-fidelity wireframes provide a detailed visual representation of the user interface and layout, showcasing how users will interact with the app. These wireframes include design elements, typography, color schemes, and interactive components, reflecting the app's overall aesthetic and functionality.
Onboarding process
As part of the onboarding process, users have the options to link their social media accounts and choose which people or businesses they want to follow. After linking their account, an extensive list of local events is provided for users to filter their preferences.
Personalized feed
The home page of the app is a feed of events curated for the user based on their preferences they filled out in onboarding.
Community space to share, connect, and promote
A newsfeed that allows users to share their experiences at events and connect with others, while also enabling hosts to promote their events and build excitement among their audience.
Prototyping
Hi-Fi Usability Tests
Participants: 5 participants
Type: Unmoderated remote testing via Lysnna
Objectives:
Evaluate if the onboarding process is easy to understand and meets user need of a personalized feed
Assess the flow and design of features when users want to attend an event
Assess functionality of community newsfeed
Positives
Easy filtering for events
Informative event details
Convenient reminder setting on confirmation page
Flow and designs felt familiar and easy to navigate
Improvements
A general reminder setting in the notification settings of the app, which can also include adding to Apple/Google Calendar
Majority of users said the community feed wouldn’t be very useful to them for a few reasons:
Users don’t care much if other people post only of themselves at the event
Most likely posts of an event on the feed has already passed so it wouldn’t be helpful in event discovery
Users revealed that they still like to see pictures that promote the event to get a better understanding of what to expect. It can also be a way for hosts to post updates to keep their audience informed.
Iterations
Before
After
After some consideration, I decided to restrict the posting feature to hosts only (which would need an extra application process). This approach allows users to still connect with one another while ensuring that desires for promotional content are effectively addressed.
In addition, I also embedded a community feed within the event page so users can easily find promotional posts published by the host or co-hosts.
High Fidelity Prototype
Click to see prototype ↴
Reflection
What I learned
This project taught me that original goals can evolve or shift in response to unexpected challenges uncovered during user research. I didn’t find that a sense of community would be lacking until I learned through user interviews that the majority of participants didn’t feel as connected with others as they wished. With these new insights in mind, it allowed me to problem solve effectively, adapting my approach to better align with user needs and preferences.
What I could improve on
Color schemes that complement values of the app. While I was set on a bright color to convey happy and lively emotions, finding complementing colors to bring out the most of the app was challenging. The key is to take time and be intentional with every color chosen.
Next steps
Create user and host profiles
Investigate what other features or information I should add to the events page
Develop a general reminder setting in the notification settings of the app