We conducted interviews with 8 DePaul HCI students with questions that focused on how often they attend events, their process of finding events, event preferences (virtual/in-person, location, price), and their experience levels.
Across the interviews we conducted, we found that:
1. Users use multiple sources to find events
2. Many struggle to keep track of event logistics
3. Price, location, subject matter, and event type are important factors when deciding whether or not to attend events
From our user research, we created our user persona Amanda. We had debated whether or not to create two personas, one for the experienced student and one for the newer student. However, in our affinity map, we did not find enough of a difference between these experience levels to warrant two personas. Most students, despite experience level, had the same frustrations, motivations, and processes.
After identifying user needs and pain points, we conducted a competitive analysis of sites that our users currently use to find events.
We found that:
Taking into consideration competing meetup and event platforms as well as listening to user needs, we identified gaps and opportunities for a UX focused solution.
We wanted our solution to be a crowdsourcing app that:
1. Helps users find and keep track of events they're interested in
2. Create and maintain community ties and networks
Each of our team members designed their own version of the app's following page:
We then combined the best features from each design to create the design basis for our app.
After our initial wireframes, we created more screens and conducted usability tests with 4 users to see where improvements could be made.
- Three participants asked about having the search button on the home page
- Three participants said that there was too much information in the home page
- One participant had a problem with finding the search button on the explore page
The class had ended before our team had a chance to revise the design following the usability testing. After reviewing the project to put into my portfolio, I decided to go ahead and finish the final design to bring the project to a more satisfying close!
Based off user feedback, I modified the following page to be less information dense and included the search bar at the top. I also modified the explore page by taking out the live event feature which seemed to confuse users and distract from the search bar.
This project was a bit time constrained due to the length of my class but I think it would be interesting to continue working on the design of the app, so I can get more practice with the design process. I definitely would like to add the calendar features to the prototype and see how that would be integrated.
As for the research, I would have liked to conduct the interviews with UX students of different schools and geographic locations which may have provided some more insights and perspectives.
This was my first UX project that I had worked on with a team. I definitely learned a lot about effective communication and collaboration. I also think my Figma skills got a lot stronger over the course of this project (finally got a good grasp on auto layout!).