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Problem Overview
Collabrating to Design the NXNE 2024 Mobile App from Creating Personas to Prototyping.
This project represents a collaboration with the NXNE Festival 2024, where we, the design team, have been commissioned to create an intuitive, interactive, and personalized mobile app. Our design aligns with the contemporary, dynamic, and intimate essence of the festival, encouraging discovery and sharing among users. Key objectives include providing a comprehensive directory of participating businesses and venues, as well as integrating a collection-based game feature to gamify the festival experience. Our responsibilities encompass creating wireframes, mockups, and prototypes to effectively communicate concepts, while collaborating closely with internal and cross-functional teams to define and implement innovative solutions. We are committed to developing clean, accessible, and user-friendly interfaces that prioritize usability, with the ultimate goal of delivering a visually appealing and highly engaging app that enhances the overall festival experience and fosters brand loyalty.
The Goal
Balancing Functionality and Aesthetics.
The overarching goal of this project is to design an intuitive, interactive, and personalized mobile app for the NXNE Festival 2024. The app should address key principles of creativity, innovation, and functionality in its user interface and interaction design, while also adhering to accessibility guidelines and aligning with NXNE's brand identity.
The project's main objectives are:
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Provide a comprehensive directory of the businesses and venues participating in the NXNE festival.
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Incorporate a collection-based game to gamify the festival experience for users.
While our team was only responsible for delivering the comprehensive business and venue directory, we were also required to create essential screens for the collection-based game feature.
From a user experience design perspective, this will require a strong focus on ensuring the app is efficient, usable, and visually consistent. The goal is to deliver a seamless and enjoyable experience that is visually appealing and allows users to easily navigate and utilize the directory's features. Additionally, the design should encourage greater interaction and engagement from users within the app.
The Concept
Design Concept:
Contemporary, Dynamic, Discovery, Intimate, Share.
Our client gave out the design concept for the NXNE 2024 mobile app, which seeks to capture the vibrant, innovative spirit of the festival through a user experience that is both contemporary and dynamic. The app should facilitate a sense of discovery, allowing users to easily navigate and explore the diverse range of musical acts, local businesses, and cultural experiences that NXNE has to offer.
At the heart of the design is a focus on creating an intimate connection between the user and the content. The app's interface and interactions should feel personalized, encouraging users to share their own discoveries and experiences with others within the NXNE community.
The Design System
Creating the Moodboard.
We searched for inspirations, looked across different music festival apps in the world, and created a moodboard incorporating the design concept, color theme, and all the inspirations we gathered.
Understanding The Users
Utilising Personas to Visualise Target Users' Needs.
We created two personas to understand our users, which gave the team a clearer visualization of who we were designing for: a student music lover and a busy working professional. We believe that these two personas will be the main users of the app and the primary type of attendees as well.
The Design Process
Step 1: Paper Sketching
We sketched out variations of the main screens to drive more foot traffic to the related businesses:
My Favourites, Map, My Passport, and Schedules.
My Favourites
Variation 1
Variation 2
This feature allows users to bookmark their favorite event spots, making it easier for them to plan and revisit the businesses and venues they want to visit.
My Passport
This feature is designed for the collection-based game, where users can collect and track their progress in the gamified festival experience.
Map
Variation 1
Variation 2
This screen provides users with the location of the various event spots, helping them navigate and plan their route through the festival.
Schedules
This screen enables users to check the schedules of the event spots, ensuring they can arrange enough time to visit all the businesses and venues they want to explore.
The Design Process
Step 2: Wireframing and Prototyping
We created the main user flows and screens, carefully sketching out the layout and arranging the placement of UI elements to ensure a seamless and intuitive user experience. Let me explain the key user flows in more detail:
1. Select Your Preferences
One of our primary goals is to create a highly personalized experience for users. By asking them to select their favorite music genres and preferred event locations, we can provide tailored recommendations and suggestions, ensuring users discover the aspects of the festival that align with their interests and preferences.
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2. Homepage
The app's homepage serves as the central hub, providing users with quick access to all the essential features they need. This includes the festival directory, upcoming events, interactive map, personalized schedule, digital passport for the gamified experience, favorite venues, and an overview of their overall festival experience.
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3. Feature Screens
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Directory
Allows users to browse and search through the comprehensive listing of businesses, venues, and events participating in the NXNE Festival.
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Events
Displays the full schedule of performances, workshops, and other festival activities.
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My Festival
Tracks the user's overall progress, achievements, and engagement within the gamified festival experience.
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Schedules
Allows users to create and manage their personalized itinerary, ensuring they make the most of their festival experience.
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The Design Process
Step 3: Final Design
We made sure the final design of the mobile app was seamlessly aligned with the overarching design concept: contemporary, dynamic, discovery, intimate, and share - not forgetting the engaging game feature, of course.
Contemporary
The visual design of the app embodies a contemporary aesthetic, leveraging the NXNE Festival's theme colors and incorporating their distinctive mascot throughout. The predominantly dark theme, with a bold pairing of black and vibrant pink, gives the app a trendy and modern feel that perfectly suits the music festival experience.
Dynamic
To create an exciting and energetic atmosphere for music lovers, the app features a prominent countdown timer on both the loading page and the homepage. This dynamic element immediately sets the tone and gets users hyped for the upcoming event.
Additionally, the interactive map allows users to create custom avatars and see the real-time locations of their friends, fostering a sense of connection and community.
Intimate
Personalization and customization are at the heart of the app's design. By allowing users to select their favorite music genres and preferred event locations, the app can provide tailored recommendations for the best spots and associated businesses to visit during the festival. The Favorites page enables users to save and quickly access the places they want to explore, while the personalized schedule ensures they can plan their festival experience with ease and efficiency.
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Discovery
The Events page encourages users to discover the diverse lineup of performances, workshops, and activities happening throughout the festival. The interactive map further enhances the discovery experience by allowing users to visualize the locations of these events and plan their routes accordingly.
The "My Festival" feature also enables users to uncover their friends' experiences, inspiring them to explore new and exciting festival offerings.
Share
The "My Festival" section serves as a hub for users to share their experiences with their social circles. Whether it's capturing and showcasing their festival journey or interacting with friends on the interactive map, the app fosters a sense of community and encourages users to share the excitement of NXNE.
The Game
The "My Passport" feature is the centerpiece of the gamified experience, allowing users to scan QR codes and collect stamps as they explore the festival. This collection-based game not only incentivizes users to engage with various festival offerings but also creates a sense of accomplishment and belonging within the NXNE community.
How can I do better next time?
Maximizing User Understanding With Tight Timelines
Given the 1-month timeline, we lacked time for in-depth user research. Instead, we leveraged internal music lover expertise to quickly develop representative personas.
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While lacking nuanced insights, this approach allowed us to establish a foundational user understanding to align the team on core needs.
Moving forward, I recommend building in more time for thorough research, including interviews, testing, and iterative persona refinement. This would enable a richer, more accurate user representation for a more impactful experience.
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Incorporating ongoing user feedback could also validate assumptions and drive necessary adjustments. A balance of upfront research and continuous validation would be ideal.
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Despite constraints, the team's use of internal expertise enabled quick persona development to keep the project moving. However, investing more time in comprehensive user research will be crucial for maximizing the mobile app's effectiveness.