This was a 4-day sprint where I was challenged to design a microsite for an event of my choice that will take place next year.
Burning Man
Burning Man is an annual event held in Black Rock City, NV and a year-round culture generated by a global community of participants.
ProjecT:
- 4-DAY BOOTCAMP PROJECT
TOOLS:
- MIRO
- SKETCH
- MARVEL
- INVISION
Role:
- PROJECT MANAGER
- RESEARCH
- UX/UI DESIGN
Brief
Process
Research
Market Positioning
Ideally, Burning Man site should move toward the Blue Ocean area on the Market Positioning which is more on the modern direction yet keeping design simple. This is where I drove my process to achieve that placement for the company.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I analyzed three different companies, with similar business goals, to understand the layout of their websites and how easy it is for the first time user to navigate. Based on the 4 companies researched, I found that most of them were rather dated. In the Feature Comparison Chart, you can see a few highlighted features that need improvements on the site.
Qualitative & Quantitative Data
Data was collected from 25 survey responses from festival attendees and 5 interviews.
68%
Attended Burning Man 2019
11%
Were satisfied with the website
71%
Were upset about not useful filtering feature
Synthesis
By analyzing the results from both qualitative and quantitative data and usage of an Affinity Map I found Users’ main Pain Points:
1. The website layout is hard to navigate
2. Creating accounts for new events
3. Hard to get tickets
4. Not helpful search & filter features
The data collected allowed me to dive deeper into the mental models of the users ensure that the website I was redesigning was centered around their needs, I created user persona Wild Wendy. She represents the primary user demographic, an adventurous artist interested in attending Burning Man.
When using the company’s website Wendy would go through a simple journey and according to the data collected would face some difficulties as displayed in her User Journey Map.
IDEATION
With these assets complete, I understood the priorities of our user and how I could design for their needs. I brainstormed around users pains and gains gathered from my research to come up with a million of ideas that would help improve Burning Man's website.
I then narrowed down the ideas by placing them into "Effort vs Impact" chart.
Minimum Viable Product
Based on the chart above, I focused on some of the Must/Could have features as they required the least of the effort to implement but had the highest impact on the User Experience. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was creating a better site layout with clear tabs and navigation panel, and Theme Camps filtering feature so that the user can easily choose the camp they want to join.
FLOW, DESIGN PATTERNS AND UI CHOICES
To help people like Wendy to get the information about the event and get fully prepare for it I analyzed the current site and marked the areas mentioned the most by the users as rather complicated. Among those were the overload of colorful images (with links) on the main page and alphabetic filter for all the theme camps registered for the event. Please, see the images below.
The Visual Competitive Analysis for Burning Flipside and Lucidity. Insights: both websites had more clearly defined tabs and brand attributes.
THE SOLUTION
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was creating a better site layout with Theme Camps filtering feature so that the user can easily choose the camp they want to join.
I focused on a Happy Path for the user (Wild Wendy) when she opens the Buring Man website and chooses the theme camp for the next event.
USER FLOW - Happy Path
I focused on a Happy Path for the user (Wild Wendy) when she opens the Buring Man website and chooses the theme camp for the next event.
Design
The Lo-Fi Wireframes were tested them with 5 users as it is known that 5 people is a minimum number of testers that can determine 85% of design mistakes.
Unfortunately, the Lo-Fis were far from ideal. 4 out of 5 Users noticed that some tabs were duplicated and needed to be removed. All 5 users expected to see certain search filter categories for the Theme Camps that were missing. So, I had to continue research to find out what filter options are needed the most.
Iteration
The findings and the corrections were done for the Mid-Fidelity wireframes.
Usability testing with 5 users showed a 100% completion rate and a 96% usability score. So, I proceeded with Hi-Fi prototyping.
Moodboard & Style Tile
The brand attributes I’ve chosen for Burning Man were: Artsy, Creative, Disruptive, Daring and Unique. To transmit these attributes I modified the brand colors and came up with a Moodboard and a Style Tile that features the spirit of the Burning Man community.
Delivery
HI Fi Wireframes
The second round of user testing reviewed that users did in-fact feel at ease navigating through pages. So, only minor changes were made to the Mid-Fi, such as logo relocation and adding a menu icon on the top left for even better clarity.
PROTOTYPE
Results from the final usability test revealed that users felt comfortable when search for the necessary information confident they could find the theme camps based on their interest faster.
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