Project: Live Wire
Roles:
Research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Conducting Usability Studies, Accesibility, Visual &
Iterating Design
Duration: Apr 2018 - Jun 2021
Project Vision
Challenges
Live Wire is an international community-based online platform for music fans to keep track of their favorite artists shows, buy concert tickets and log & share their live music experiences. It connects users and artists and facilitates the process of experiencing live shows. Moreover it cultivates an echo-friendly environment by promoting a culture of zero-waste.
1) Explore concerts and festivals seamlessly.
2) Allow users to dive into the world of live music and share it out.
3) Bridge the gap between fans and artists.
Starting Point
Starting off, I asked myself a few initial questions. Who is our primary user? What kind of goals do they have? Why would someone want to use this application? Just how large of a scope do I want this project to be? After interviewing sixteen participants to establish archetypes later on, it became evident that the goals they wanted to accomplish all fell within the same categories; finding out more options to buy and share live music experiences.
Assumptions
Declaring our assumptions was imperative to the process because it would allow us to decipher what was actually accurate and what wasn't. We established a starting point where each team member had the ability to ask specific questions about our audience, issues that may arise, and how we might go about solving them.
Business Goals: Design an app that allows users to feel closer to
the artist.
Users: People who want to share their passion for live music.
User Goals: Buying the tickets to attending the concert and sharing
pics and opinions.
Potential Features: Developing a social media that allows users to
buy their tickets and share experiences with
friends in the same app.
Meet the users
PRIMARY
Name: Clara
Age: 23
Family: Single, lives alone
Occupation: Marketing Specialist
SECONDARY
Name: Pierre
Age: 35
Family: Single, lives with his girlfriend
Occupation: Web Designer
Clara is a marketing specialist with a busy and demanding schedule. She works for an mid-size automobile company and loves live music. Clara would like to find people who share her passion about live music as well as having a place to buy and share experiences with the concerts he attends to.
Pierre is a web designer with a busy and demanding schedule. He works for as a freelancer and loves to go to concerts in his spare time. Pierre needs to easily find and buy concert tickets in one place so he doesn’t have to worry about picking up or losing the tickets he already bought.
Competitors
We looked at several potential competing companies and although non compete directly with Live Wire, they can still infringe on the business' revenue & popularity. Live Wire has the opportunity to capitalize on this by bringing social media to the platform to create a one-stop without over saturating the user's selection.
The majority of features between competitors were very similar, however the main differences that we notice were:
- Easily Accessible vs Hardly Accessible
- Too many Screens vs simplifies Interaction
-Bright / Distracting Interface vs Minimalistic Interfaces
- Specialization of products
Navigation Model
We constructed a user flow of what a basic star to finish journey looks like while purchasing a concert ticket. This helps us in understanding ways users can interact with the product, as well as allowing us to see navigation through user goals.
Wireflow
The final high-fidelity prototype presented cleaner user flows for booking a venue. It also met user needs for more customization.
Iteration
After creating our prototype from low fidelity wireframes, our team prepared a 16 questons survey for participants to fill out before we began conducting a usability test. We asked 16 different participants to run through different scenarios in our prototype in hopes to garnering enough feedback to use for our next set of design iterations.
Not secure.
We found that most users who were looking to purchase a relatively procy item did not find the security they normally would with a "certified seller" icon or label.
Too many tabs
In the buy screen of an item, users were having to tap more than once in order to add an item to their cart or to checkout. This glaring issue should not be in any shopping site.
Trending?
Having the initial home and trending screens share numerous similarities resulted in majority of users being confused as to which screen they were actually on.
No Dropdowns
We wanted the buying process to be quick and simple. While dropdowns are a familiar interaction for most, they're a lazy solution to a complex issue; plus they're boring.
Style Guide
Using warm feeling and comfortable colors, helped convey the feeling of comfort to our users in Live Wire. Shades of gray, red, and black are present almost everywhere throughout the world in some aspect, so it paired well with the idea of night clubs and venues coming from everywhere across the globe.. The main typeface of choice for the site is Avenir. I wanted to select a sans-serif typeface that would bode well with the rounded edges within our interface, as well as the black/white contrast inside of the app.
Colors
#231F20
#453C3
#635757
#9A8D8D
#C4C3C3
#4766B0
#FFFFFF
#D12D17
Type
13pt - Medium, Avenir
13pt - Bold, Avenir
20pt - Regular, Avenir
20pt - Bold, Avenir
24pt - Bold, Avenir
Buttons
Normal
Pressed
#D12D17
#9A2717
Logo
Explore Concerts
Challenge 1
A key factor when trying to gain a user base is to create a splash screen void of conflict. If the user wishes to browse a concert within the app before creating an account, they might be more inclined to create one later on. Along with the login and register options, the "continue as guest" option allows for that users to browse the app without an account.
Share Live Experiences
Challenge 2
Live Wire's primary audience is intended to be live music fans, and they need to be able to use the social media features as well. Within the profile of our app, we feel that Live Wire has achieved just that.
Unite Fans & Artists
Challenge 3
With features like Private Concerts being accessible within our app, it allows for the user to purchase experiences as never before. This feature bridges the gap between fans and artists.
Takeaways
Live Wire made me realize just how difficult it can be to produce an application that complex. Even though I had much knowledge about music business coming into the project, it became problematic when designing around a few screens. Luckily, I acted as somewhat of a SME (Subject Matter Expert) and was able to guide the direction of my process. This made me realize just how important it is to have known A LOT about the subject of the app you are developing in order to create a well-rounded experience for both first-timers and veterans.
Reach out to me
contact@fariasfernando.com
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Copiright © 2023 Fernando Farías