EVENTFULL
Empowering the Knowledge Experts through Streamlining Event Planning
The difficulty of tracking multiple moving parts of the event planning process can be intimidating for inexperienced individuals who would like to teach their skills to others in today's sharing economy.
EventFull is an event planning platform that guides users and integrates event data from connected 3rd party apps, organizes it, and displays it in an informative and visually appealing manner.
Client | Flatiron school project
Roles | User research | Strategy | Concepting | Wireframing | Prototyping
Tools | Wireframing: Sketch | Prototyping: Invision | Annotated wireframes for handoff: Figma
Project length | 5 weeks
Team size | 4 designers
What do a baker, a graphic designer and a yoga teacher all have in common?
Many individuals possess unique knowledge or skills that curious learners can benefit from, but lack event planning experience. While various online solutions allow these people the ability to monetize their expertise by hosting online courses, those wanting to host a non-digital learning event are left unsatisfied.
We interviewed 11 potential users with various levels of experience hosting their own events to try to uncover the pain points of those individuals throughout the process.
We learned that hosting an event is a long process that involves many moving parts and tools: budgeting, finding an appropriate venue, promoting and communicating with attendees - our users just don’t know where to start, and when they do, they would usually use multiple tools, because the existing ones only address separate aspects of the process, which is inconvenient.
“It would be nice to just use one tool for the whole process.”
— Teneille G.
As busy individuals who typically have multiple responsibilities, our users need a convenient solution that will allow them to teach their skills, share their passion and diversify their income.
How might we help independent knowledge experts track the multiple moving parts that event planning entails?
Since initial research showed that users lack guiding and the ability to track the multiple moving parts, we addressed those as key principles for solutioning.
We realized planning an event is much like project managing, and with that in mind, we looked at productivity platforms such as Monday, Trello, Asana, Jira and Slack, to learn about characteristics that can be tailored to the event planning scenario.
Based on the initial user research insights, the productivity platforms analysis and informal guerilla testing of different concepts, we were able to make some informed decisions that would instruct our design:
1 | Browser-Based Platform
We decided that the most appropriate medium for such a tool, like most of the other tasks and project management platforms, would be a browser-based tool.
2 | See the Big Picture
Through the informal testing of concepts, we confirmed that users seek a tool that enables them to visually see the big picture, so they can easily see what’s been done and what needs to be done. This makes them feel in control, so the process seems less intimidating.
Users favored a concept that guides them through a timeline, while allowing the flexibility of jumping around to different steps.
3 | Cross Platform Synchronization
Much like Slack or Trello, to solve for the multiple tools being used for planning an event, we wanted to enable integration with other tools that are already being used by our potential users: G-suite, Eventbrite, and a variation of venue sourcing and social apps for promoting the event.
Our test users elected to integrate their other accounts without any hesitation, which validated that we were on the right track.
In order to do the heavy lifting of event planning for the user, we used the information collected in our initial user research to map the different steps a user would have to go through, which later helped us create the site map. We’ve indicated the pain points of each step, so we can address them in our design.
Journey map (click image for expanded view)
Site map
EventFull - A streamlined and approachable planner
The final prototype offers the user a step-by-step guidance using progressive disclosure of the key tasks of event planning, to not overwhelm the inexperienced user, but also allow flexibility by letting the user work in any order they see fit:
Getting started screen
1 | Users can switch between events and an overview dashboard.
2 | Planner navigation offers a recommended order for users to go through, but they are free to jump around as needed.
The product offers a bird’s-eye view that allows users to track key tasks, reminders, and checklists, so they are able to see the big picture and feel in control:
Overview dashboard: Users can track key tasks, reminders, and checklist
It will simultaneously track the data from the connected APIs of other planning tools and platforms, organize it, and display it in an informative and visually appealing manner.
Eventbrite synchronization flow
Is it useful? Is it usable?
We tested the prototype in order to confirm that potential users of EventFull are able to easily and effectively navigate the application to fulfill their needs and desires in the context of event planning.
“I could see myself using it…it [helps with] tracking everything but it also helps you think of the next things, which is less work for me”
— Leonard R.
Users thought the order of the tasks made sense and were excited about the connectivity options, however they pointed out some usability issues, that were fixed in the final prototype: labeling of the main navigation icons to signify their affordance and clearer guidance in some of the steps.
Next Steps // Project key learnings
Time allowing, we would have liked to further explore:
Collaboration with other event hosts - this came up as a desirable feature by some users who co host events. Considering most users plan independently, it was not part of our MVP.
Mobile app - most productivity platforms have a mobile app that accompanies the browser-based product.
This project taught me about:
The benefits of casting a wide net - in order to solve for the knowledge experts, which mostly have zero to little experience in event planning, we wanted to understand the process of holding an event and the frustrations it entails from experienced event planners point of view.
The effectiveness of guerilla testing - with low fidelity prototypes in our hands we were able to show our concepts to users, get a clear feedback about our design and a get better understanding of their mental models.