End-to-End App Design
ORBIT: Sync Up, Jam Out
Product
My role
UX/UI Design, UX research, information architecture, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing.
Timeline
80 hours
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Maze
Client
DesignLab Capstone
Introduction
Billboard states, "32 million people attend music festivals in the United States yearly." That is a heck of a lot of people. That makes what I will say next a lot less shocking: 100% of users I interviewed experienced network congestion while attending major music festivals.
Identifying the Problem
I experienced network congestion firsthand when I went to EDC Orlando a couple of years ago. About 99.9% of the time, my friends and I did not have cellular service. Therefore, we all had a hard time using technology to help navigate the significant event, especially with thousands of people around.
Before we dive in, here is the focus
Having a clear understanding of the user's needs, I used simplicity and usability as my guiding principles for my design process for ORBIT. The key focus was to ensure that every interaction was intuitive, minimizing cognitive load and enabling users to accomplish tasks with minimal effort.
A user-friendly design that focuses on simplicity as people will need to solve a problem as fast as possible to get back to the festival.
Ensure a seamless flow of usability.
Focus on user accessibility.
What do we want to find?
Before I began collecting data and conducting research, I wanted to ensure that I had framed the direction I wanted the research to take. I sometimes have trouble starting the research process because there are many factors to consider. It's like beginning a 1000-piece puzzle: You start by separating the colors that match and analyzing the different fittings to see how you can connect the dots.
Here are some of my thoughts and questions:
How do users like to organize and coordinate their plans for the music festival?
It will be essential to learn if users had any issues with cellular service at a festival.
Understand any other challenges and frustrations attending music festivals.
What are users' expectations?
How are we going to collect the data?
A product cannot be user-centric and hold up in the market if we don't understand two things: the users and the competition.
Here are the methods we are going to use to collect the data:
Competitive Analysis
User interviews
Usability testing
As a naturally competitive person, I enjoy researching other companies to find opportunities that the market lacks. I searched for companies that help solve network congestion issues for huge events and came across Bridgefy, Briar, and Berty. I also learned about Whova, a popular event-planning app for conferences and professional events.
Key Findings
The private messaging apps utilize Bluetooth to achieve connection to other users.
Private messaging apps encrypt messages and prevent data issues from falling through.
It seems like a limited number of people who know Bluetooth Low-Energy technology exists.
Click to view full analysis
User interviews have always been my favorite because they allow me to put a face to the product. I love talking to users and learning from their experiences. Prospective users make the research process more meaningful and allow me, as a designer, to focus on the user's needs and pain points.
Here is an overview of who was interviewed:
I interviewed three people between the ages of 26-30 years old who have been to at least one music festival
All of the interviews were conducted through video call via Zoom or Google Meet.
Key Findings
100%
of interviewees named cell phone service issues was one of their biggest challenges
3 out of 3
interviewees believe that having a map feature will be very helpful to find amenities, stages, and friends.
all interviewees think festival updates and communication is important
Click to view full data
Now that we have all this wonderful data from the user interviews, what do we do with this information? A great way to sort through all the data is by categorizing the insights into themes. This process has a fancy name called Affinity mapping. I like to have fun with the themes, making the process feel less like post-it hell and more like a game.
Featured are the top-level themes that were the main focus when making design decisions:
Challenges
Check out those features!
What's the plan?
Click to view full data
Beckham the Frequent Festival Goer
After conducting user research, developing a user persona aims to bring more empathy and understanding to the user's goals, pain points, and behaviors. Ultimately, this helps me stay focused and help better align my design decisions. I am not a huge fan of user personas as they cannot capture the complexities of all human nature, but I have met some Beckhams in my life.
Click to enlarge
To better understand the user's needs, I created POV statements and How Might We questions. This helped me develop a deeper understanding of the problem and present opportunities for innovation to generate possible solutions. I often think about the story of Goldilocks in this context, as there is never a one-size-fits-all solution.
J desires to stay connected with their friends at music festivals, but with the lack of cell phone service, he needs an effective way to communicate with friends without cellular service or WI-FI.
H quickly gets lost in a new environment and, therefore, requires a straightforward way to navigate around large crowds to find specific amenities.
R loves to be prepared, but until the festival, a lot can get lost in translation; therefore desires a way to have accessible information and updates even in cases where they don’t have internet or cell phone service.
How might we help J stay in contact with their friends when they don’t have service or a WI-FI connection?
How might we help H easily navigate the festival grounds?
How might we help R access information about the festival at the tip of their fingers and give them peace of mind with real-time updates?
Now that we better understand the market, pain points, and users' needs. The next goal is determining the best steps to introduce solutions to help users achieve their goals. Flows are about mapping out the most efficient pathways to implement solutions, ensuring seamless navigation and user satisfaction.
Sign up
Create an event
Add a festival to your list
Nudge your friend Andrew
Logo Design
Style Guide
Sketches
Dashboard features
A countdown timer to add excitement for users' future events.
Ensuring uninterrupted connectivity, a Bluetooth sync toggle stands ready.
Dive deeper into the music scene with featured artist integration, seamlessly bridging the festival to other music apps for exploration.
Festival schedule at their fingertips, users can effortlessly navigate the lineup, ensuring they catch every beat of their favorite sets.
An interactive map becomes their trusty guide, leading them to amenities, friends, and stages with ease
Message features
Seamlessly transitioning from lively chats to your contact list.
Discovering new connections is a delightful journey for ORBIT's intuitive friend finder.
The Bluetooth connection remains steadfastly in view, ensuring uninterrupted communication throughout the festival grounds.
Need to grab a friend's attention? A gentle nudge feature lets you do just that.
Festival listing features
Discovering festivals to explore or seamlessly adding the ones you're attending, instantly updating your personalized dashboard with every addition.
Users can find peace of mind by accessing festival details to help them stay informed.
Explore the lineup with featured artists, offering a glimpse into the events for the night.
A map of the festival to guide attendees to stages, amenities, and other resources.
Event planning features
Creating events and adding all the necessary details ensures your friends are in the loop.
The ability to add the festival you're attending
Easily extend friend invitations with just a few taps.
Now is the time to test the design. The prototype will allow us to show perspective users an example of the product and gain valuable feedback to improve the product if necessary.
Determine if users have a good understanding of the purpose of the app.
Understand usability and accessibility through user feedback.
Gain clarity and feedback on task flows.
Successful completion rates
Ease of use
A positive gauge of usefulness
Limited to zero accessibility issues
Sign up
Create an event
Add a festival to the list
Nudge your friend, Andrew
6 participants completed the usability test
Successful completion rate
Ease of use
Determined by the number of misclicks and time spent on the task.
Positive gauge of usefulness
All tested users said they would use this app
Limited to zero accessibility issues
Additional Feedback
The header font Nico Moji was deemed hard to read by one user.
The sign-up onboarding process was too long
ORBIT has been such a joy to design. I truly embraced the challenge of designing an End-to-End app and I loved putting everything that I have learned throughout my time in DesignLab to the test.
My goal with this design was to keep the UI simple. Users backed up my design decisions, calling it "user-friendly" and "easy to use." I also learned a lot about accessibility. Something that didn't necessarily cross my mind was the readability of the heading of the app. Originally, Nico Moji was the heading I chose to give off that music festival vibe, yet through my usability test, a user having trouble reading the copy on the app would 100% tarnish the accessibility of the interface. It reminded me that accessibility should never be sacrificed for aesthetics.
Moving forward, I would love to continue to build out safety features, more robust event planning features, a festival ticket e-commerce store, and more. The online and offline capabilities of this app have a lot of potential. In addition, I loved learning more about Bluetooth Low-Energy technology and how it can be used to help others in network-congested areas. One of my favorite things about UX/UI/Products is how many new things you learn and dive into.
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