During a UX Design class (Jan – March 2021) through BrainStation, I redesigned an app for The Rock Boat, a music festival that takes place on a cruise ship.
This is not a real client project. I do, however, feel there is a real need to improve the current app so it seemed like a good subject.
User research
Ideation and concept development
Information architecture and user flows
Wireframes
Brand identity visual design
Mock ups
Prototyping
User testing
Presentation
Problem:
It’s hard to keep track of a festival schedule when you’re in the moment—users want to quickly glance at what shows are coming up and where so you don’t miss out. Users also have no easy/cheap way communicate to meet their their friends onboard once off the grid.
Solution:
Festival goers need a simple tool to help keep track of their friends while onboard (without wifi or data) and to help keep track of a busy festival schedule to maximize concerts (old favourites and new discoveries alike).
Value:
Improving the digital experience for the festival goer could improve their overall festival experience and may increase the chances of customer loyalty.
To improve the festival experience, some ideas were:
enable users to browse the full schedule and add select shows to their own customized schedule for better efficiency with the schedule
add festival friends to share custom schedules
be able to play a song by each artist to discover artists prior or during the event
be able to use the app in almost full capacity without internet
After doing user research I discovered that perhaps my biggest challenge was to figure out a way to give users everything they need without having wifi or cell data.
This required a bit of creativity because usually we have access to the internet everywhere we go and don’t think otherwise.
While it is possible to buy internet to use onboard, it is expensive, isn’t reliable, and many users say they don’t bother.
User stories:
“Being able to customize my own schedule and share it with my friends beforehand (and have them do the same) so we could find each other a little easier while onboard would be the best.”
Persona one (the social one)
“I would love to customize my own schedule to ensure I don’t miss a show I really want to see. I would also like the ability to refer back to the full schedule, see a list of all the artists, and some sort of map so I can make the most efficient use of time on the boat.”
Persona two (the analytical music lover)
Based on the collective research (I asked a Facebook group of thousands of real users who attended the festival), I decided to keep the app to the point, giving users only what they need for the best experience without being distracted by too many unnecessary features.
Once the organizational structure and basic wireframes were seeming to work well from a small group of testers, I created a brand style and began designing all the visual components (typefaces, a colour palette, icons, photos, etc) to add to the mock ups.
I tested it again in high fidelity and iterated a ton on a lot of screens in terms of experience as well as visuals.
The custom schedule screen was the most challenging. I was stuck on it early on so I moved on and didn’t attempt it until the hi-fi phase. The visuals added some context and helped the idea come to be but still took a lot of iterating to eventually come up with the expandable and collapsible drop downs for each one hour time slot.
