Background

MelonYeah is a two-person design project for my Capstone. The original idea is to create a marketplace platform like Eventbrite but target nightclub industry; it would allow people to find and promote nightclub events. The project scope covers two target user groups with different needs:

Nightclub event organizers (in most cases the club managers) have two primary onjectives: to plan and promote nightclub events; and to manage customer data effectively.
Customers have one single goal: Have an easier way to search nightclub events in area nearby and make plans ahead of time.

My Role

I was responsible for concept definition, sitemap, and workflow. Because the project consists of two target user groups, nightclub managers and club customers, the design responsibility was split in half; I was responsible for the club customers sector, including research, design, and user testing.

Prototype: Consumer Interface Prototype
Tools: Sketching, Proto.io, Illustrator, Marvel App
Deliverable: Personas, User journey, Sitemap, Lo-Fi Prototype, Interactive Hi-Fi Prototype

The Problem

user needs to go to many websites to search/promote nightclub event

There lacks a unified platform for both nightclubs and customers to communicate to each other effectively. Most nightclubs promote events by publishing event information on their websites and on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, which do not mainly focus on this purpose. On the other hand, customers need to go to multiple nightclubs' websites or spend much time on social media channels just to search for a suitable and exciting event on one day that they planned to have some fun.

The Approach

We opted for a Lean UX approach and focused strictly on the design phase: sketching, protoyping, user testing, and mockup design. This approach allowed us to start from lightweight concept and modify design as key stakeholders provide valuable critiques.

Meeting with stakeholders helped us understand their problems. Together we identified problems from the two target groups, aligned expectations and constructed a shared platform for the project.

The Discovery

To explore the challenges that the two user groups are facing and better understand the industry from insiders, we conducted interviews with a nightclub manager at Foundation Nightclub Seattle and three nightclub customers.

Findings

Nightclubs use "guestlist" to allow customers enter clubs early without entry fee in order to ensure the popularity of events and secure the break-even point being met.
There is no systematic way for nightclubs to promote events. Generally a nightclub manager would create an event on the club's website. He would then share that event's link on the nightclub social media sites such as Facebook. And then hope the event would spread through word of mouths.
Customers searching for nightclub events need to go through many websites. One customer told us his experience when he was new to the area. To search for an event, say on Friday night, he've asked his colleagues and friends for recommendation, used Yelp and Foursquare to search for clubs, and then visited these clubs' website to find one he was interested.
When signing up for guestlist at different nightclubs, customers need to fill out same information again and again.

Based on our research, we created 2 personas to represent our target users. For each persona, we addressed the motivation, preferred information representation method, technological fluency, behaviors, and background stories.

Ideation and Information Architecture

The original idea for this project was a mobile application for users to search for nightclub events with minimum effort. Our team held a rapid brainstorming sessions where we attempted to expand the initial design idea. We quickly realized that the application wouldn't be possible without nightclubs' effort to input event information. We found our design opportunity consists of two parts:

How do we help nightclubs promote their events more effectively?
How do we create a better club-event searching experience for the customers?

This discovery lead us to further expand the scope of our project and to include nightclub as the second user group. This design decision helped guide our further ideation and design process.

Once we settled on the idea, our team divided work based on user groups; my teammate focused on the nightclubs and I focused on nightclub customers. Presentation onward will only be about my nightclub customer design.

Prototype and User Testing

Upon deciding on one wireframe design, I created sketches and then low-fidelity prototype using Proto.io. User testings were conducted after each prototype phase to ensure the prototypes were successful. The test revealed some major flaws in my design:

It is unnecessary to have a Homepage. User should be landed at most-used Events page.
For the customer interface, a list view of My Favorite Events is more appropriate than a calendar view.

This led to large changes to the overall design of the application, as well as adding more informative user interface text.

Detailed design

The gallery below shows the final iOS app design for customer interface.

Customer interface prototype is available on Marvel App

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