Lost Paradise
Project Overview
Lost Paradise is a music festival held annually in Glenworth Valley. This app was designed as the final project for a short course I completed on UI/UX design. While the initial brand analysis process was conducted in a group setting, the rest of the design process was a solo effort.
Problem Statement
Festival-goers often experience challenges that diminish the overall experience. These include:
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Missing performances due to conflicting schedules or a lack of real-time updates
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Spending a lot of time in long queues for food and drinks
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Losing time due to difficulty navigating around festival grounds
Proposed Solution
A mobile app that provides one place for real-time schedule updates, managing personalised schedules, maps, and cashless transactions for food and drinks. The user may now fully focus on having fun, which enhances their overall festival experience!
Business Opportunities
Increased Revenue
A cashless payment system will reduce waiting times, and encourage festival-goers to purchase more food and drinks
Increased Loyalty
An enhanced overall experience will lead to customer satisfaction and increased loyalty (more returning customers)
Data Insight
Insights from app users’ behaviour, preferences and spending patterns lead to better decisions for future festivals
Primary User Persona
MVP Features Chart
As part of a group activity, we used a MVP chart to determine which features to prioritise for the MVP prototype. In short, the features that were considered to be high importance but easy to do would be prioritised.
Moodboards
Sitemaps and Flowcharts
Low Fidelity Prototype
As part of a collaborative process, all class members tested and provided feedback on each other's lo-fi prototypes. This would help us refine our designs for the final prototypes.
1. Briefing Test Users
Each user was presented with a set of scenarios, where they needed to use the prototype to achieve certain goals. Here is one example (tap/click image to enlarge):
High Fidelity Design and Prototype
Below are some comparisons between the wireframes and the hi-fi design. In some cases, user feedback from the lo-fi prototype has led to noticeable changes in the hi-fi design.
Dashboard
Added a shortcut to ‘My Schedule’ on navigation bar, as many users expressed that this is quite an important feature that will used frequently
Timetable
Added shortcuts for each day of the festival, as many users expressed frustration with too much scrolling to see Sunday and Monday timetables
Artists List
No significant changes were required on these pages. Height of thumbnails were reduced, so that more thumbnails can be seen on the screen
Artist Page
Many users expected the ability to quickly swipe to the next artist in this view, so this feature was added to the hi-fi prototype. Also, play button is now inside the video frame, which is a better use of screen real estate
My Schedule
General feedback highlighted that a shortcut for removing items from ‘My Schedule’ was expected by most users
Cashless Payment System
Improved the wording of action buttons by using concise, task-specific, action words. This also improves the app’s compliance with WCAG standards
Visual Design System
The following examples show how the elements of colour, typography and spacing are used as building blocks of the design:
Learnings and Takeaways
Accessibility from the Onset
Regardless of time constraints, it's essential to prioritise certain accessibility aspects, like colour contrast ratios, from the beginning. Investing time upfront to get it right is more advantageous than fixing these issues later, as it ensures a user-friendly experience and saves resources in the long run.
Empathy with Target Users
Despite not being a music festival goer myself, the user research process helped me empathise with the needs, pain points or challenges faced by festival attendees. This allowed me to create a truly user-centric solution.
Design System is not a Static Thing
Since the design itself goes through iterations, the design system must also evolve. Adopting an atomic design makes the iterative process more efficient, as it's easier to manage changes at a modular level
Gather Feedback ASAP
Working on a MVP taught me to prioritise essential features to gather user feedback asap. Rather than striving for 'perfection', this approach allows for early user engagement and iterative improvements based on feedback. I’ve found that this also ensures a user-centred mindset in the design process.