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 for it which is why I chose this as a subject.

Skills highlighted: User research, ideation/sketches, wireframes, brand identity, visual design/hifi mock ups, prototyping, user testing, presentation skills

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.

From this, I created a very simple information architecture for the entire app focusing only on organizing the key areas a user would need most.

Once the organizational structure and basic wireframes were looking good enough (this still needed some adjusting later on), I created a brand style and began designing all the visual components such as typefaces, a colour palette, icons, etc.