Utopia Music Festival – Event Microsite
Project Overview
The goal was to create an event and design a microsite with a unique feature that would bring added value to the user. As a lover of electronic music, I began by choosing an Electronic Dance Music (EDM) Festival as the type of event.
Roles
User Research
Interaction Design
Branding
UI Design
User Research
Diving into research, I conducted one-on-one interviews with questions focusing on the things people did before and during the music festivals they'd attended.
Insight
What people wanted most from their festival experience was to witness amazing live events alongside their friends. However, certain factors they couldn't get around would occasionally inconvenience them.
People's Goals
Watch favorite artists play
Make memories with friends
Find information & purchase tickets
People's Pains
Limited set information ahead of time
Wasting festival time coordinating artists
Loses track of friends
Occasionally sees a very sick person
"I usually go with the intention of gaining a great live experience and sharing a few memories with my friends along the way."
Ideation
Ideating around people's goals and pains, I came up with a few ideas that would improve their experience both before and during the festival. Organizing them using the MSCW Method, I was able to pin-point what would give them the most value.
Must
Digitized Line-Up
Artist Pages
Should
Line-Up Schedule
Alert System
Could
Friend Groups
Interactive Map
Emergency Button
Won't
After-Party Locator
Minimum Viable Product
The unique features that would add the most value to users would be a Digitized Line-Up with corresponding Artist Pages, as well as, an Interactive Dashboard where they can easily access the things that are most important to them during the festival. The dashboard would include the aforementioned features: Line-Up Schedule/Alert System, Friend Groups, Interactive Map, and Emergency Button.
Aside
Due to the time constraints of the project, I was only able to flesh out the Digitized Line-Up/Artist Pages and the Interactive Dashboard with two features that I deemed most impactful to festival attendees: the Line-Up Scheduler/Alert System.
User Flow
To help me visualize the structure of the microsite, I mapped out the main flow, or "Happy Path", that users would take in order to queue artists into their personal line-ups and then review their schedule using the dashboard.
Lo-Fi Sketches
Based on the different stages outlined in the user flow, I put the concept down on paper. Using the sketches, I tested the flow and terminology to make sure it was as concise and usable as possible.
Mid-Fi Wireframes
With the data I gathered from the testing, I improved the original flow and implemented the changes as digital wireframes. After testing and iterating, users seamlessly queued an artist and found their schedule within the dashboard.
Creating the Brand
One of my favorite songs as a child was "One More Time" by Daft Punk. The video for the song was about a Utopian Space Colony that celebrated all the while they traveled through space. This was the basis for the theme of the festival, which I decided to call "Utopia". Referencing the emotions that the song creates, I defined my brand attributes.
Brand Attributes
Fun
Energetic
Exciting
Youthful
Moodboard
Having defined my brand verbally, I had to make sure that the emotions I intended to capture would resonate with our users. To do so, I put together a moodboard to move past the original concept and begin visually defining the brand. Testing the moodboard with the intended users yielded positive results. This let me know I was on the correct path in visually representing the feeling of music festivals.
Style Tile
In order to more concretely define the brand, I constructed various brand elements (logo, color palette, typefaces, imagery, and UI elements) and placed them into a Style Tile, a visual reference to the design language of a website. Testing with the intended users yielded positive results, so with limited time available, I decided to use these elements as my Atomic Design Inventory and jump straight into Hi-Fi Mock-Ups.
Hi-Fi Prototype
The prototype demonstrates the previously mentioned "Happy Path". At this point, festival attendees have already purchased their ticket and are logged into their account. After receiving notification that the festival has released their official line-up, attendees can view all the artists and queue them into their personal schedules to receive notifications about the given artists. At any point either before or during the festival, they can access their dashboard and view their personal schedule.
