Research & Findings

To better understand user needs in the event application space, I conduct an interaction audit of 8 existing event applications, considering the information architecture, value proposition, and layout of content.

Using the findings from this audit, the team got together and created a survey to collect quantitative and qualitative data on user event search habits.
We collected 24 responses from users between 23-38 years.

From our user survey data, the main goal that emerged for users of event applications was

UNDERSTANDING OUR USER

Persona

With more data on the table, we were able to construct a persona that reflected the average city event junkie.

Pulling real facts from our user interviews and the qualitative data in our surveys we were able to define Sam, a writer for a local magazine. At night, Sam loves to explore his city and attend local events, and in the daytime, he writes about these events for the local magazine.

NEW USER FLOW

Coming into this project, there were already preliminary wireframes created to reflect the user flows for the application.

Part of my task was to audit these wireframes, identify the gaps in the user flows and improve the interaction design for the various flows

You can read more about the complete audit of the existing wireframes here.

SELECTING EVENT CATEGORIES

The three screens in the signup flow ask the user to first pick a category, then pick an interest from the selected category, and then again select meet-ups from those interests in that category. This poses a problem because it gives the user decision fatigue even before they are able to start using the app. This was remedied by eliminating screens 2 and 3 and keeping only screen 1. Users will select their interests and the application will show them all events in their interests, improving recommended events with machine learning as users select and favorite specific events.

The third tier of selection in the onboarding user flow: “Meetups”, is inconsistent with the functionality we are striving for with this app. This functionality implies that the app, like the already existing “Meetup” app, only presents users with meetups and events that are held by everyday people or formed groups. This doesn’t include events such as festivals, and concerts held by organizations and large companies or established artists. Keeping only screen 1 eliminates this issue.

SIGNUP SCREEN

This screen is similar to most signup screens, however, there are a few things that could pose a problem for the user. First, there is no indication as to where to enter the information. There are input lines under the text labels but this may not be intuitive to less experienced users. This can be solved by including some placeholder text for the input field to signal to users that it is a text field.

Also, screen real estate is taken up by completion bars from previous screens, this was replaced with a back button to preserve screen real estate.

Lastly, there are no options for social sign up with social accounts which is a one-step process that saves users time. These were fixed by including social sign-up options.

EVENT SCREEN

The event screen has a tiny image box for the event poster, since people tend to be more visual, I decided to make the event poster/image larger (end-to-end).

I also changed the label of the button from “Submit” to “Get Tickets” since the former was vague.

Lastly, there was no option to share the event with family and friends which was the main pain point that was brought up in user interviews. I added options to favorite and share on the event page

SELECT INTEREST AREAS

One of the major pain points we heard from most of our users was that event apps don’t necessarily group events into the same categories that users had painstakingly selected in the onboarding step of the application.

For Vente, we created distinct interest areas for users to select in the onboarding process and used those same areas as a way to section out events for users.

RECOMMENDED & FEATURED EVENTS

Users are presented with recommended and featured events based on previously attended events right on the homepage of the app

TAG-IN YOUR FAMILY & FRIENDS

Users can share event information with family and friends, and see how their network is engaging with any event right from the app.

.GIF

It was quite daunting trying to get from concept to sketches, and finally to a working interaction within the application. Using Adobe XD and Figma, I was able to bring the idea to life.