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.

skills highlighted:

user research, ideation and concept development, information architecture and user flows, wireframes, brand identity visual design, prototyping, user testing, presentation skills

Problem?

Users said it’s hard to keep track of a festival schedule when you’re in the moment—they just want to quickly glance at what shows are coming up. They also said they have no easy/cheap way communicate to meet (or find) their their friends onboard once off the grid.

Solution:

(one)

Create a schedule of the full festival with the option to add shows to their personalized custom schedule which would show only selected shows for the day. This wouldn’t need wifi/service in regard to their own profile.

(two)

Allow users to share their custom schedule with added/approved friends pre-boarding (or at port stops with wifi or service). This way, if you lose track of your pals, you can easily see what ship venue they might be in. It’s not a perfect solution since users can edit their own schedules onboard and it wouldn’t sync with their friends in out-of-service areas—but it would be free and better than nothing.

Being able to customize the schedule to only highlight the shows they want to see for a quick overview of the day ahead and not losing track of your favourite concert pals could improve the festival experience which may increase customer loyalty.

Since we usually have access to the internet everywhere we go and don’t think otherwise, perhaps the biggest challenge was to figure out a way to give users all this without wifi or cell service.

While it is possible to buy internet to use onboard, it is expensive, isn’t reliable, and many users say they don’t bother as they don’t come on this trip to be connected.

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.

The average age for users is people (men and women equally) in their 30s, 40s, and sometimes 50s.

I created a brand style and began designing all the visual components (typefaces, a colour palette, icons, photos, etc) to add to the wireframes, I tested key screens with a core group, I made minor iterations to most pages.

The custom schedule screen was the most challenging because the users and I agreed that this screen needed to look visually very clean and simple. The expandable and collapsible drop downs for each one hour time slot throughout a single day seemed like the most sensible solution for this.

The final screens: