Overview

ElevantX is a mobile application designed to enhance the overall experience of going to midsize to large sports and music events.  We are looking to define the hiccups throughout the whole process of the experience. The process includes searching for tickets, purchasing, directions, parking, finding your seat and closest amenities such as food or restrooms. ElevantX is designed to be a useful mobile application to assist with these pain points.

BRAND PLATFORM

Company/Product Name

EleventX

Rationale: combined “Elevated”, “Event” and “Experience.”

Mission/Vision

People are social creatures. When event-goers want to go out and have a good time, We provide modern tools that make it easy for you to elevate your experience from beginning to end.

Rationale: This company will impact all people, who love going to events. This brand should stand for making their experience more enjoyable.

Brand Personality

EleventX has an inspiring purpose that goes beyond navigating through large crowds at an event, we care about making our users feel safe while doing it.

Rationale: It is important that the brand have genuine credibility, knowing that we care about the health of our customers. The concerns about the Co-vid virus are important to us, as EleventX is not just focused on the bottom line — we care about people.

Brand Attributes

Exciting, sincere, trustworthy, effortless, caring

When a product is exciting, it has a higher rate of return users. When a product conveys a sense of sincerity, care, and trust people are more likely to use it. A large crowd can overwhelm and scare customers so the product experience must be effortless.

Problem:

• People often have trouble navigating in large crowds, such as Sports events and concerts.

• There is no current Mobile application that lets a user navigate with ease through the whole process from finding tickets, to ride share, to finding their seat and even locating the restrooms and concession stands.

• People don’t like getting lost or paying for an overpriced meal. 

Solution:

The answer to this problem was to create a community-based, mobile app where users could:

• Find events easily

• Travel with ease

• Navigate through the venue

• Earn points, redeemable for concessions

• Socially interact with other users

  
  

Users:

This app targets those demographics that statistically enjoy going to concerts or sporting events.  They are smartphone users and can be of any age, race or sex.  They might be wary about going to events as they’re varying regulations during CoVid-19.

Role:

I was the sole designer for this project, which resulted in me being responsible for:

• Research

• Ideation

• Prototyping

• Testing

• Evaluation

• UI & Style Guide

Constraints:

The main constraints of this project were:

• Covid-19

• Covid-19 restrictions changing throughout the process of the project

• Short timeline

• A small user test size

Process:

This project was executed using a traditional product design method that I learned at the Art Institute of CA, San Diego and then refined with the Springboard UX/UI Design Course:

Stage 1:

• Secondary & Primary Research, Interviews, Competitor Analysis

Phase 2:

• Ideation, sketching, prototyping, wireframing, Low-Fidelity Mockups

Phase 3:

• High-Fidelity Mockups, Style Guide & Final Product

Secondary Research

Before designing anything, foundational pieces of information needed to be understood.

Competitor Analysis

Current mobile apps in the market that use some features we will include are:

Navigation Apps

1. GOOGLE MAPS

The granddaddy of GPS navigation options.

PROS:

• Works for many forms of transportation

• Tells you about traffic issues

• departure and arrival times for driving.

CONS:

• No social media sharing function

• Some reviews complain about next-turn directions being delayed or incorrect, with people missing their exits.

• GPS can drain your phone battery

• If you make a wrong turn, it will often redirect you back to the original route, even if a new route would be shorter.

Download availability: iOS and Android

2. WAZE

This app stands apart due to its crowd-sourced traffic information.

PROS:

• Lets you know about accidents, construction, police, road closures and other traffic-related items in real-time so you can choose an alternate route.

• Users can share up-to-date gas prices.

• Possible to connect the app to Facebook so your location is posted in your timeline.

• Can save you time by allowing you to find the most efficient route based on traffic conditions.

CONS:

• Icons for roadwork and other obstructions can clutter up the map, obscuring your view.

• Social aspects can be distracting if you are getting a lot of notifications with sounds.

• The battery can be drained quickly because the app is always updating with new information.

Download availability: All smartphones and tablets with GPS functionality

3. MAPQUEST

One of the original navigation services in desktop format also exists in app form.

PROS:

1. Focus is mostly on maps and driving directions, although it also offers turn-by-turn navigation and traffic information.

2. Can tell you where to find the best gas prices.

CONS:

• Pop-up ads turn some users off.

• Mobile versions can give inaccurate directions.

• Not available offline.

Download availability: iOS, Android, Windows Phone

4. MAPS.ME

This app is for the globetrotter, as its main feature is high-quality maps around the world.

PROS:

• Offers an array of features including auto-follow mode, turn-by-turn directions and traffic data.

• Full offline functionality, including search function, navigation, and searching for things like restaurants or ATMs.

• When online you can share your location with friends.

• Because everything is offline, this app uses less battery power than others that run in the background.

CONS:

• Businesses on the maps are not updated frequently.

Download availability: iOS, Android, Blackberry

Ride Sharing apps

UBER

San Francisco-based Uber is by far the most popular ridesharing service around. As of November 2019, Uber had over 100 million riders who together took over 1.7 billion trips. The app works worldwide, too, so you can count on Uber to get you home even if you’re partying in a foreign country.

Uber’s pricing is fairly competitive with other offerings, and with the number of drivers on the platform, you should have no trouble getting a standard fare ride on most days. If you don’t mind riding with strangers, Uber provides a discounted carpooling option in most cities called uberPOOL to make the expense a little more palatable. If you’re riding with a larger group you can use the app to split the fare among passengers, which is a great convenience for nights out with the gang.

Aside from UberPOOL, Uber offers a variety of ride types across different price points. Here’s a quick rundown of the rides you’ll find in most major cities:

Uber X: This is Uber’s standard offering. You can expect a 4 door vehicle that is 15 years old or newer.

Uber XL: This is the standard large format Uber ride. You can expect a 4 door vehicle with 7 factory-installed seats.

Uber Select: This is one level up from Uber X. You can expect a car model 2009 or newer with a leather or vinyl interior. Drivers are also required to have a 4.5-star rating or higher and at least 50 completed lifetime trips.

Uber Black/Black SUV: This is the service that started it all. Uber Black and Black SUV offer a city permitted vehicle that is 5 years or newer and driven by a professional licensed/certified driver.

Uber Comfort: Uber’s newest offering is basically any car from any of these categories that also has extra legroom (so no compact sedans), along with drivers who hold a 4.85 or higher star rating and have completed at least 250 lifetime trips.

Should you or one of the members of your party need it, Uber is one of the few on-demand services offering a disabled access option called UberASSIST. Select it in a supported city, and you’ll get a certified driver with a vehicle large enough to accommodate folding a scooter or folding wheelchair.

LYFT

Lyft, the second-largest ridesharing app by volume — and our favorite — offers transport in over 600 U.S. cities including New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Making its way to becoming international, Lyft is now available in 12 cities in Canada. Perhaps best known for the bright pink mustaches that once adorned the grills of its drivers’ cars, Lyft offers a range of vehicles to choose from, including average-sized Lyft autos and larger Lyft Plus cars. They have also joined the mass migration towards scooters, with mixed results.

Much like Uber, Lyft institutes demand-based pricing during the busiest hours. Unlike Uber, Lyft caps premiums at 400%. If that still sounds too rich for your blood, Lyft offers a carpooling service called Lyft Line, which lets you split fares between passengers if you opt for a larger private car. Eventually, you’ll be able to hail a self-driving car from Lyft. Check out our in-depth analysis in our Uber vs. Lyft breakdown.

Lyft offers a few ride options similar to Uber. Their Lyft Lux rides are very similar to Uber Select. You’ll be paired with a newer car that has a leather or vinyl interior. Lux Black and Lux Black XL are the top tier rides from Lyft in both Sedan and SUV sizes.

Site Source: https://www.sixt.com/magazine/tips/top-free-navigation-apps/

Key Takeaways:

• Most platforms do now allow communicating with friends/organizers directly

• Even though there are many apps that will track service, they to not provide rewards

• The one that does provide a reward does so only as a "service credit"

• All apps have some form of social media sharing of events the user attended

Primary Research

First-hand research was conducted to further understand the key players and their unique perspectives, pain points, and motivations for using these platforms. This research utilized the methods of:

• Community Survey

• Stakeholder Interviews

• User Journeys

• User Personas

Community Survey

A mass survey was conducted using the local students of Springboard and Slack communities. This method was utilized because it was a fast way to gather large amounts of data from a population of event-goers. This would lead to key insights about the potential users of the platform to be designed.

Key Takeaways:

• The most popular forms of regular community support come from Slack communities, Facebook groups, and meet-ups

• The most sought-after features in a community service app were finding easy ways to navigate through large events.

• Rewards for completed service was the overwhelming winner for increasing motivation.

• Finding the event location, Covid Restrictions, and navigating to the user’s seat were the biggest frustration points.

Interviews

Interviews were conducted with parties that responded to my Google survey. About 50 responses were reviewed and 10 participants were selected for zoom interviews. The interviews were 25-30 mins

Key Takeaways:

• First impressions were mainly excited event-goers who were frustrated by large events

• The biggest concerns were around Covid restrictions and people not allowed in the stands.

  
  

Covid Saftey Ideas

• 20% amount of fans in the arena

• Socially Distanced lines

• Clean stations

• Limits for the Restroom
  
  

User Journey

Using this method I wanted to further empathize with the potential users of this app as they go through the process of 1) finding an event to attend, 2) traveling to the event, 3) parking 4) subsequent experiences after the event, such as finding their seat, restrooms, etc. Through this, I wanted to uncover or validate potential concerns and frustration points.

User Personas

Based on the interviews and surveys, I created two different personas. These take on the two archetypes of users that will primarily use the app. One being the user that loves going to sporting events or music events, usually younger, less concerned about safety. The other persona would be a family that would have different needs for different kinds of events. This persona is older and more concerned about their kids or their own safety.

Looking Forward

• Project Learnings

• Future Roadmap

Project Learnings:

Many valuable things were learned from this experience. I was and still am very excited for the concept and a few years later I am still thinking about ways to improve it or add user-friendly features.

I learned that not only can things happen in the company to throw off a project but that completely unknown, uncontrollable things can as well (covid). The key takeaway is to adapt and consistently innovate.

A big thing I had to learn to do with my experience in web design/development, is to not think so much about the technical part of how that challenge is going to work out, because that is a dev job, not UX.

Finally, I got a bigger understanding of the process of the user journey from start to finish, by myself.

Future Roadmap:

The main focus of this project was to make sure that users could use core app features before adding extra elements. In the future, I plan to include:

• A more complete social section

• Keep testing and iterating.