How get-togethers might look post-quarantine
A quick run-through of my 4th(?) UX/UI project at Ironhack
As always when a new project is announced at Ironhack the first thing you have to do is dart your eyes back and forth from the zoom participant list and guess who the lucky people are that’s gonna, unfortunately, be paired up with your infinite banter in a breakout room during a literal 9–5.
I already had a feeling after the fifth week who I would be paired up with.
Everyone is extremely talented and outgoing, but there’s always been easy conversation whenever Adam Kuhr and Michael Moyers and I were in the main room together so, it only made sense that Dave Ostergren and Daveed would pair us up for the last project. With how strong our speaking, prototyping, collecting data, and interviewing skills are, we knew this project would be a great treat for the three of us and we were right.
At times it felt like we were breezing a little too freely with the project with me randomly stressed out thinking we don’t have enough time then glancing down at my calendar and noticing it’s only TUESDAY?!?!
It could probably be the fact that the first three projects were insanely difficult because we were learning the material while trying to communicate out ideas, collect data, arrange powerpoints, being mindful of other’s personal situation outside of class hours, then having to juggle all that in a one week sprint. It was overwhelming at first, but now I can proudly say I’m getting the hang of this whole boot camp thing.
Since we had the greatest DJs in our cohort Michael and Adam we had to go with a badass group for our team name and ended up with an American hip-hop group formed in NY, hint: it has Method Man.
Still didn’t get it?
So after a few breathers, we went straight for it.
I went to my trusty, handy, I’ll never leave you, you can never do any wrong, kanban board, and jotted down everything we needed to complete before Friday to manifest good progress and productivity.
This week’s project focused on creating micro-interactions into microsites and responsive abilities. In casual terms, we needed to create both a web page and app that would garner the same user experience. Decidedly, we went with a post-quarantine festival experience because of current events (just a global pandemic, no biggy).
We wanted people who felt cooped up during quarantine to be given a space where they could freely socialize again and have an opportunity to assimilate back into that normal lifestyle they’re craving. So with some ideas already brewing [inset shameless plug to my Lost City Brewery case study], we put those ideas to the side and went on through the 4D (Discover, Define, Deliver, and Develop) process with the user’s in mind.
“We are designing for users, not ourselves” — Either Dave or Daveed, I’m starting to lose track 🥴
During our secondary research, we found out that over 83 billion people had to rearrange their plans during COVID, people lost over $9 billion in estimated revenue, and outside events took the biggest hit. We then arranged our interview questions to encompass: events people missed, what they learned during quarantine, what some of their goals are post-COVID, what they want events to have post-COVID, and how likely they would be to even attend events post-COVID.
After 106 survey responses, we pivoted from our initial concepts of creating a graduation theme festival for students who missed their graduation to an inclusive social festival where friends can socialize in groups or meet up with other people with the same interest.
Our main takeaway being: people didn’t feel the need to relive past experiences when they have already moved on to the next chapter of their life.
If COVID was over for one weekend, people wanted to go to music festivals, parties, and travel. Hell, someone said they just wanted to “date 52 men”. I’m not entirely sure if COVID was the only thing to watch out for here…
Following our research with our main user's expectancies in mind, we started our Feature Comparison Chart by comparing and contrasting their mission and what they provide, and how we could incorporate our research into creating an even better experience for our audience.
Then we found our blue ocean: COVID awareness, intramural sports, and age-specific themes/events where everyone would be able to feel included. Taking to our Value Proposition Canvas where we highlighted our user’s main pains, gains, and jobs: being in crowds, worried about restrictions, tired of being alone, reminiscing over events they missed, and comfortability of socializing again.
So *drumroll* meet Friendly Francey, a 27-year-old working in production at [insert made-up production company in Chicago] *the crowd goes wild*
Her main goals are to meet new people, reminisce on past events, hang out with friends, and network with new ones. She needs to socialize post-COVID responsibly whether it's traveling or going to a festival.
Francey’s day consists of browsing Instagram, finding out about the festival, booking tickets with friends, waiting in line for her wristband, socializing with her friends, getting lost, leaving the venue after a weekend of highs, and then getting post-festival blues. So our goal was to access and situate the pain points in already existing festivals and create products and services that would not only alleviate those pains but boost our blue ocean.
How might we provide a space for friends to reconnect after covid?
How might we make users feel comfortable socially readapting to a post-COVID world?
How might we make our ambivert users feel safe while researching, attending, and even after leaving the event?
So our MOSCOW chart contained social distanced tailgating sections, COVID safety, distinguished sections, vaccination wristbands, open-mic experience, range of environments, freedom of engagement, and more.
A relook into our Value Proposition Canvas but for the company side our gain creators, pain relievers, and product and services is a mobile application where users would be able to locate their friends and booths (speakers, artists, and games) while adhering to vaccination/COVID policies.
Our multi-themed COVID safe festival helps our young ambivent users who want to safely assimilate into a post-quarantined life in a group setting by prioritizing COVID safety measures and providing a safe and open environment.
With our Lo-Fi usability testing doing absolutely horrible with a 67% success rate and 47.5% misclick rate, we took the comments “not clear enough”, “I'm not sure where to click”, “the buttons are too small” seriously and went on to a design a more concrete Mid-Fi and got a 100% success rate, but we still wanted to minimize the time on task and misclick rates.
We then did some visual benchmarking with our Visual Competitive Analysis: Lightning in a Bottle and SXSW keeping in mind our brand attributes: engaging, inclusive, innovative, safe, and spirited with some more guidance from Dave Jobs (Dave).
We wanted the users to feel connected, relaxed, safe, warm, and included.
Through user testing with our mood board and style tile we were able to hit those emotions spot on, we did do some pivoting with the text and some of the colors and images that created any conflicting emotion. Then we started our atomic design with some icon atoms, button style molecules, certain text-heavy organisms, and complete page templates.
A multi-themed festival addressing the users’ COVID related concerns and preferences, while providing an engaging event for users who want to socialize in a group setting. — Together Again
But our work doesn’t end here, we need to continue examining how users feel during the experience through our success and failure metrics.
You’ve probably heard Ben Franklin’s quote: By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Let’s remix it a little for UX.
Prepare to fail, hard and fast, or you’ll fail to prepare. — Me(?)
Because failure is not the opposite of success rather a part of it. So preparing to fail and understanding where you’re failing is a huge part of what makes UX/UI design so valuable. — Dave & Daveed
Fast forward to the 21st century where you can now measure failure with high bounce rates, high misclick rates, low ticket reservations, etc.
More interactions: https://xd.adobe.com/view/fa35c1d5-b060-4fc1-a9fc-8fb3e170caf4-af66/?fullscreen
This project has allowed us to realize that people: have a fear of being reintroduced into society right after quarantine, have desires for safety measures post-COVID, and miss the energy of going out with small groups of close friends and family. Maybe we’ll be able to pick this up after the boot camp and continue with some more feature iterations we wanted to implement 🤔.
Feeling a strong to heavy 10 on this case study, TRANS-ITION
Thank you for reading, since you’re probably procrastinating you might as well read my case study on procrastination — Advent (you might even wish it was real).
