Overview

Our client was looking to create an educational community marketplace via an event-planning platform that gives individuals with desirable skills or knowledge the ability to organize their own local events.

They asked our team to create a product that provided white glove support for event organizers who need more than just a ticketing platform.

Duration

• 4 weeks

Roles

• UX Researcher
• UX Designer

Tools

• Figma
• Miro
• Keynote
• Google Suite
• Zoom
• Extra Sticky Post-it Notes*

The Challenge

My team and I were responsible for designing a digital plateful that helped individuals organize an in-person event to share their unique skills.

Problem Statement : “Entrepreneurs who want to share their skills need a way to find resources so they can design an immersive in-person experience for their community.”

Our goal was ______

Our Solution

1. Build a sandbox application that allows users to organize events individually and as a team.
2. Design a way for users to seamlessly view and book available vendors and venues that align with their goals.
3. Create it on a platform and device that makes it accessible to use during planing and day-of the event.

Research:

What are the Emerging Industry Trends?

1. Attendees want more face-to-face time and prefer interacting with Humans over AI.
2. Event planners are becoming event experience strategists.
3. The line between consumer festivals and corporate events will continue to blur.

Who are the Competitors?

• Direct Competitors: Eventbrite, Event, Double Dutch, Meetup, Planning Pod
• Indirect Competitors: The Knot, WeWork.

What are the gaps in the marketplace?

• Lack of platforms that heavily support hosts through the entire event planning process.
• Lack of tools centered around beginner event planners, hosts and managers.
• Lack of understanding of customer needs, versus the actual customer expectation.

Target Audience

Individuals with experience or an interest in organizing events. Individuals with an interest in event planning and management on a digital platform. Individuals with a unique skill set and/or knowledge that they are interested in sharing.

We vetted and interviewed 13 individuals who identified as “Event planning novices” and learned that :

• Users want a flexible event planning process that offers several options and tools that help with organization and outreach.
• Users want to make sure that their events go beyond the scope of marketing or making a profit, and instead of creating a positive impression on the client and attendees.
• Users are aware of the increasing value of in-person events and experiences and looking for ways to stay relevant, socially impactful, and “instagrammable.”

32 individuals participated in the survey and it allowed our team to identify :

• Current products and services that our survey participants use. This includes both analog and digital tools like handwritten checklists, task managing tools, Google Suite, and venue layouts.
• Common positions that people hold that are responsible for planning events, however, we do not have enough data to specifically narrow down to a specific group we would like to target from the survey results. We also found that over 96% of our survey participants have planned events before.
• Hurdles that event planners need to overcome when booking a venue.

Affinity Diagraming:

Through affinity diagramming, we’ve scoped down actionable steps we can incorporate for the next iteration before the presentation. These steps address our four key insights and help us achieve an improved MVP to present.

• Users need to know they've completed a task successfully.
• Users need a straightforward interface.
• Users need more information about the product/service.
• Users need clear navigational clues.