Team
Taylor Leslie & Lexi Berryhill
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Illustrator, Pen + Paper
Role
User Research, UX Design, Prototyping
Agora
Overview
Problem Statement
Attending large-scale live events often faces logistical challenges that detract from their overall experience. Currently, there is a lack of infrastructure and software available to manage these logistical issues, resulting in increased stress effectively and decreased enjoyment for attendees. In order to enhance the event experience and ensure attendees are fully immersed in the activities, there is a need for a comprehensive logistics management system that can alleviate these challenges and provide a seamless experience.
Agora is a mobile application that aims to connect live event-goers with safety protocol and information about the event’s safety measures and plans. We are targeting live events with many attendees because there is a need for more safety and group planning support. Through initial conversations with friends, family, and peers, we discovered that it is constantly challenging to coordinate schedules, determine meeting points, message group members, and find medical and safety protocols at live events. This app will improve the user experience of live events and benefit attendees and event holders.
IRB Statement
Our human test subjects are under the protection of our IRB. There are no risks associated or anticipated with test subjects participation. All data collected is be protected and will be destroyed by June 1, 2023. This research was conducted by Taylor Leslie and Lexi Berryhill in the Department of Graphic Communication at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. If you have questions regarding this study or would like to be personally informed of the results, please contact the researcher(s) at tlleslie@calpoly.edu and leberryh@calpoly.edu and/or Hocheol Yang hyang25@calpoly.edu.
Research
Background Research
The event industry is ever-growing, especially in a post Covid-19 world. The media industry is stressing the importance of event software to achieve better business outcomes, which means that Agora would help the event attendees, creating more business for event stakeholders. For instance, the global events industry will bring in a whopping $2.194 trillion by 2028 — Significantly more than the $887 billion the market commanded in 2020 from COVID-19. (Bizzabo, 2022). In addition to the market growing, there is predicted to be a 2X increase in hybrid and in-person events over the last three months of 2022 (Bizzabo, 2022).
User Surveys
To better understand our users, we surveyed the Graphic Communication student body, friends, and family to get the most accurate and diverse responses. We asked 60+ users about their experiences at live events through multiple choice, a scale of one to ten, and open-ended questions. We used our findings to shape our app to solve problems users were facing. We mapped out valuable insights and highlighted some critical survey responses below.
Empathy Map and User Personas
Through user interviews, we aimed to gather insights into users' perceptions and preferences regarding live event mobile applications. These responses were recorded to gain a deeper understanding of user needs and preferences. From there, we made an empathy map to visually display our findings.
94%
of respondents within the media industry, from a Bizzabo survey, believe event software makes it easier to achieve business outcomes (Bizzabo, 2022)
40%
of event planners are unsatisfied with the tech options available to them. (Howarth, 2022)
Competitive Analysis
We analyzed eleven competitors to get a feel for what eventgoers are familiar with and to see what does or does not work well. We first explored each app as much as possible and took screenshots of effective pages or something we wanted to avoid. We gathered all the information on FigJam and made a list of what we liked and disliked about each app (including opinions we saw in the app store reviews). We then created a matrix of what apps had each feature we thought was valuable. This helped us show how our app would stand out from the competition. Refer to the next page for the background information on two of the eleven applications reviewed for comparison.
How Might We
Our “how might we” turns our problem statement into a question that can be solved. Our brainstorms are as follows:
From our brainstorming and background research, we crafted a “how might we” statement based on what solutions best answered the needs and wants of our users:
How might we create an application for live events that keeps track of logistics so attendees can feel safe, stress-free, and focus on immersing themselves in the experience?
Feature Brainstorming
We brainstormed features for Agora in Figjam, based off of our background research:
Information Architecture
Once we had decided on the features we felt were most important, we created the information architecture. This helped us map out which information would go where and understand how each feature would be connected.
Sketching
Finishing our the site map allowed us to start our initial sketches that include our main features. The sketches below display our design thinking strategies in our screens.
Wireframes
Finishing the site map allowed us to start our initial sketches, including our main features influenced by our survey. The sketches below display our design thinking strategies on our screens.
Design Guideline
Typography
Switzer is sans-serif, inspired by 90s magazine typography with a new twist (Dafont, 2022). This font is readable, familiar, and not too complex, allowing it to be legible and suitable for a user interface easily.
Color Palette
These colors are strategically chosen to evoke a positive emotion. Additionally, bright colors are often represented at music festivals, one of the live-scale events we target.
Iconography
The icons below are used throughout Agora to speak the user’s language and increase usability. They are designed to be simple and adhere to our style guidelines.
Illustrations
The illustrations used in the prototype will represent features. The map is drawn to mimic the Outside Lands map, which we used as our theoretical live event a user would attend using Agora. The people illustrations are used as visual cues for users. These illustrations are subject to change depending on what type of event the user is attending.
Design
Mid-Fidelity Designs
We built our Mid-Fi designs by expanding on our low-fi prototypes and wireframes. The feedback below was provided by our peers and partner to improve our project before user testing. The mid-fi highlighted below follows our group and emergency flows.
Groups
Groups supports making a meeting point, sharing schedules, and creating a group message to allow users to keep their plans organized and in one place.
Emergency
Emergency supports making a siren sound, incident report form, medical document information, lost mode, mindfulness dashboard, and resource guide.
User Testing
We are currently conducting user testing for this project and plan to continue this process in order to make Agora an application that is user-friendly and speaks the language of its users. We have already conducted one user testing procedure, using A/B testing to determine the optimal layout design for the resource guide screen.
A/B Testing: Resource Guide Screen
Prodedure:
Writing a survey that uses a heat map to gather data on user engagement and attention to different design elements
Participants will be asked to take the user-testing heat map survey to compare an A and B screen in the Agora prototype. The heat map survey results will be measured and collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the different design elements
The data from user testing will be reported to identify the most effective design choices, ensuring better usability because the prototype design will be adjusted accordingly.
Results:
The study conducted a user observation using Qualtrics heat mapping, A/B testing, and multiple-choice survey questions with seven human test subjects to determine user preference between two screen designs (Figure 1 and Figure 2) with different color schemes for a 911 button.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The objective was to determine which design option speaks the user’s language, is most human-centered, and reduces the cognitive load. Results showed that Figure 1, featuring a red 911 button, was preferred by 71.43% of participants compared to Figure 2, which had a blue 911 button preferred by only 28.57% of participants. Participants' heuristic responses indicated a preference for the red button, suggesting that incorporating the color red to indicate an emergency is more effective. Heuristic user feedback also highlighted the need for larger text. In response to the question, “Which design option is more consistent with your expectations?,” 66.67% of participants favored the red button in Figure 1 over the blue button in Figure 2. Furthermore, when asked about the ease of understanding, Figure 1 had an 83.33% response rate of "yes," while Figure 2 had a 57.14% response rate of "yes." When reviewing the heat mapping results, it is evident that region 4, which are the blue buttons with crisis lines, is the most confusing part of the screen. It is observed that 60% of survey participants think that region 4 is most confusing in figure 2, and 33.33% of participants think that region 4 in figure 1 is most confusing. Overall, the study concluded that users prefer the screen design featuring the red 911 button, which is more effective in conveying emergency information and enhancing user understanding.
From combining user research, user testing results, and feedback, we created our high-fidelity screen designs. These designs are subject to change as user testing and research continues.
Lineup and Schedule
The lineup and schedule pages are an interactive way to see who is performing, when, and what friends are planning to go. Each artist has an about page so attendees can learn about the performer. They additionally see set details, what type of music each artist is, and explore external information about them.
Home, Vendors, and Map
Users can access information about each event they attend from the home page. This is where they can navigate to see schedules, vendors, activities, tips and tricks, FAQs, etc. Attendees can browse a list of vendors to see what food or drink options suit them, then locate them on a map. An interactive and searchable map where users can find everything they are looking for and more.
Groups
A way for users to interact with friends in their groups, plan meetups and view each other’s schedules. New or returning users can intuitively create or join groups for each event they attend.
High-Fidelity Screen Designs
Takeaways
Safety
A section of the app is dedicated to live event safety. Here, users can play a siren for times of distress, file a report for help, access medical resources, notify friends when lost, explore a mindfulness guide, and have quick access to emergency help lines.
Reflecting on our senior project, we are very proud. Despite the up and downs we experienced, we became a stronger team in the end and genuinely cared about the design outcome of our project. The IRB was the most challenging part of the project because the approval process took a very long time. However, it was worth it because Cal Poly now protects our research. While conducting our background research and sending out our first survey, it was very humbling to receive around 60 responses. We were very excited about how much data we could use to influence our design choices.
Implementing our background in user experience design from prior internships and clubs at Cal Poly helped us structure how we want to begin our research, designing, and user testing. This senior project was an excellent opportunity for both of us to grow as junior user experience designers and hopefully will help us with our careers in the future.
Although we still created a thorough prototype, some limitations disrupted us from getting as much done as we wanted in our timeline. One limitation that we had time with was completing the IRB because it took a lot more time than we thought. On that note, the quarter needed to be longer- we wish we could have done it over a year or two quarters to maximize the amount of quality work produced. Lastly, meeting with professionals in the live-event industry to gather their feedback on Agora would be beneficial. We plan to meet with an event coordinator at BottleRock, a music festival in Napa, CA, to have her provide constructive insight.
We are excited to keeping iterating on our screen designs!